Inheritance Query

Question

My mom recently passed leaving her estate to be split equally between me and my siblings. The assets were sold prior to my moms death and placed in a DA Davidson account to manage will she lived in assisted living. My sister is the executor of the will, giving her control of the the estate and accounts. After my moms passing her DA Davidson account was closed and another DA Davidson account was opened in my sisters name with a tax ID number instead of my moms social security number. The new account doesn’t show the previously closed account history. I want to be able to review it for myself but my sister isn’t being very forthcoming which leads me to believe she may have something to hide.

Both accounts have her name on them giving her access, but being that I an one of the beneficiaries who is willed a equal portion of the inheritance does that give me any legal right to review the account information for myself or do I have to rely solely on the documents provided by the executor?

If legally they are not required to give me the login and password is there another way to get the information, can I force them to add me to the account or is there a way that I can acquire the official account history from DADavidson that doesn’t involve the executor sending them to me? I just want to make sure I am getting the full picture.

Answer 1

They are probably prohibited from complying with your requests, since you are not "on the account" (and that is as far as they can inquire). That is, under the law, a financial firm does not make a legal determination regarding your rights to some part of the estate. There are many financial privacy laws that prevent institutions from dispensing private financial information, for example, I cannot get access to your bank records based on the fact (let us assume it were a fact) that I am your cousin, or that you have power of attorney to manage my mother's affairs. If we have a joint account, then I have an equal right to the account, but otherwise, the law protects the privacy of a person's financial records.

The only way to legally get the information you are interested in is to politely request it from the person who owns the account, or else to get a court order to compel such an accounting. I don't think there is a way to sue the institution to compel disclosure in this situation and leave the executor out of the matter, rather you have to sue the executor alleging a wrong-doing (the point being that you want to subpoena the records, and a court will not issue a subpoena just because you are curious: there has to be an actual court case).