Anyone with a Barclays account needs to close it down!

[ComedyGuns]

This is just absolutely awful - I can’t believe that Barclays (and Lloyds) with all their money, are willing to just ruin this poor woman’s life, just because they can.

She should start a crowdfunding page, but she probably doesn’t know how. My heart goes out to her…

Calls to repay £125k to woman after banking error https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjezxvpd9xno

I think the issue is more that the executors have the money, and she needs to take it up with them, not Barclays. Barclays never had the money, and Lloyds are not going to give out the money in this situation.

Banks will quite happily clear cheques for less than the written amount. You can write a cheque to "pay a sum not exceeding" if you want.

Younger readers are of course wondering "what is a cheque"? I've got a book somewhere, but haven't written one or received one for years.

The clue was in the £63 - divisible by 9 means someone switched some numbers round by mistake (transposition error).

How does this work? Just trying to work this out in my head

It was a comedy of errors, barclays should have rejected the cheque before it went to clearing because it was incorrectly completed. The number is £125.000 that's is 125 pounds not 125 thousand. No one doesn't notice their account is missing over 100k for more than 2 months

But as there's no way of seeing the balance of his account only the executor and Lloyd's would know. If his account was overdrawn when the Building Society money was paid in there wouldn't have been enough to pay the £125k cheque.

How is it a tax dodge?

The writing on the cheque suggests it was written by an older person, it's not at all uncommon for people of previous generations to keep their life savings in a bank account that they operate by way of cheques

My grandparents don't do online banking, don't even have a computer and next to never use their mobiles and would do something. They would be horrified to think someone was assuming they were tax dodgers

Well yes hypothetically lots of things could have happened but it appears they didn't so not sure how it's helpful to consider them

I'm not sure what you mean, it appears that the money was available on the day the cheque was paid in at Barclays but was no longer there when the mistake was discovered

It appears that it went somewhere else during that time period. As others have suggested there may be an inheritance dispute

I've just looked it up and if the executor had published a "statutory notice" in "The Gazette", she should have made a claim within 2 months, or she has 6 years if there was no "statutory notice". I suspect that when the problem was discovered, the account had been locked until probate, or the money had been transferred to an executors account, so that the executor could carry on paying the estates bills. I still find the whole multiple cheques and transfers between accounts strange,when it should have been a very simple electronic transaction when the original joint account was closed, and who doesn't notice that they're short of "125k".

It hasn't actually been confirmed that there was sufficient funds on the day. The wording implies that but doesn't actually say it. Lloyd's only confirms that they have received the transfer from the building society. If the account had been overdrawn it might not have gone through.

I agree, the whole reporting is very vague on the specifics but it seems most likely to me that the funds were there otherwise it seems bizarre to write a cheque to your partner that you know is going to bounce in a couple of days

But strange things happen every day so not impossible

You'd hope the MP would have done some basic due diligence of looking at the Lloyd's statement before going to parliament about it

This is why I stay on MN. Posters research more than journalists do.

If Miss B is entitled to the money, then the estate would be aware of that.

I find this interesting in the ombudsman report as a pp said, debts need to be paid by the estate, so there is something else going on.

But what is really interesting (and why this thread should not be deleted) is why on earth is Josh Babarinde, Lib Dem, studied at LSE, is championing this above other issues.

He called on the Prime Minister to work with him "to force Barclays Bank to compensate Ms Beevers" during Prime Minister's Questions. Babarinde said he was "appalled" by Barclays' mistake which had a "life-changing impact". He said he was planning to speak with the financial secretary to the Treasury to put "further pressure" on Barclays.

Say you've typed £1243, instead of £1234, the difference is £9.

Or, if you've typed £2134 instead of £1234, the difference is £900.

Or, if you've typed £4725 instead of £4752, the difference is £27.

The differences are all divisible by 9, because two of the numbers have been switched around.

How did I not know this. Very helpful @BumpyWinds

So, the couple closed their joint savings account and sent the £125k therein to his Lloyd's account (presumably because that was the nominated account for payments from the savings account), he wrote her a cheque for the full amount, she paid it into her Barclays account, they requested the wrong amount from Lloyd's and she didn't notice.

When the error was noticed, Barclays requested the money, but he had by now died, so the account was either frozen or had been emptied by the executor.

By today, the estate must have have had a grant of probate, and the assets disbursed. The cheque is evidence of a debt against the estate, but she will be out of time to request payment.

If he had died while the money was still in the joint account it would all have passed to her outside the estate, under the survivorship rule. The executor may well have realised that the money in the Lloyd's account had come from an account jointly owned with her, but chose to interpret the transfer as, effectively, a gift from her to her soon to be deceased partner, which seems hardly ethical, especially if the executor is a beneficiary of the estate.

A law suit would cost more than the value of the case, so her money is gone.

It may be possible to complain about the executor, but I don't know how, once an estate has been wound up, and its probably expensive as well.

The cheque is evidence of a debt against the estate, but she will be out of time to request payment.

But this is another bit I don't understand.

If he died in November and she noticed in January, why wasn't it presented as a debt against the estate?

Google tells me average probate is 9-12 months- even if it was a simple estate I can't see it being completed in two months, especially factoring in the delays of Christmas and NY

It might not have gone to Probate. A key detail that's missing is whether the £125k paid off any overdrawn amount in the account it was credited to. If the total value of the estate at the time of death was low enough, the account could have been closed via statutory declaration which is much quicker. If the account the £125k went to was overdrawn, that cheque was never going to be paid.

First, the ombudsman letter does not confirm that any money even existed. If you read it carefully it’s all ‘she said’, and is not corroborated by proof from any of the banks involved. It would be really easy to check her claims.

1. She can provide a bank statement detailing the closure of the joint building society account and transfer of the funds to his bank account.
2. the cheque’s handwriting could be analysed to prove the deceased wrote it out.
3. his bank account can provide evidence to the Ombudsman of there being sufficient funds in his account to cover the whole amount of the cheque.
4. an interview with the cashier who closed the joint account and transferred the money into his account would be useful - it’s not a small sum and they likely would have been suspicious as to why such a large jointly held amount was now being transferred into his account only. It presents as financial control, something banks are very suspicious of these days.

Having been an executor a couple of times, there is absolutely no way that probate would have been granted in the timeframe specified in order for his executors to close his account. In the extremely unlikely event that probate did go through quickly, there would be a financial trail of his funds - how much was in his account, who it was paid to, who it was then distributed to. In addition, the probate certificate would detail how much money was in the estate and the Will would show who inherited what.

In that case the only conclusion that we can say with any certainty is that the MP must be either very stupid or very trusting to have brought this to parliament

I may be giving him too much credit but I don't think many people would be stupid enough not to have checked that the money was in the Lloyd's account on the date the cheque was written at the very least

As you say the ombudsman could check the Lloyd's account, their report makes no sense if they did that and found that they money wasn't there. So again are you saying that they didn't check?

Clearly we are all having to speculate but it doesn't make sense to me that the whole thing has got this far if the money wasn't in the Lloyd's account and no one spotted that

There's no point speculating that maybe the money never existed/the account was overdrawn/whatever: there's no evidence of that, and the ombudsman's narrative makes perfect sense.

The couple made a mistake moving the money. If they discussed it with someone at the building society (eg telling them about their plan for using the savings to buy a bungalow for the woman after her partner's death), that person should have advised them that the money was safer left where it was. Why didn't they?

Barclays and the woman then made avoidable admin errors.

Barclays and Lloyd's were so supremely incurious about why it wasn't possible to call on the funds later (ie because the account holder had died) that they missed an opportunity to advise the woman to present the cheque to the estate.

The executor failed to approach someone who was a possible creditor to the estate (the dead man's partner, who had paid a large amount into his account shortly before he died from her own savings!). They surely knew she existed.

The MP idiotically assumes he can guilt trip Barclays into paying up. Don't MPs have advisors? He should at least have suggested getting some advice and checking the probate/will records. Or maybe she already has a solicitor, to deal with the ombudsman, in which case why isn't the solicitor doing that?

It's just a catalogue of incompetence all round.