“I was devastated to find out that my husband was leading a double life”: he had $ 50,000 in joint bank and bitcoin accounts with his secret girlfriend. Can I claim this money?

I found six credit cards he had on my back with payments over $ 1,000 each. I found out he was trading bitcoin BTCUSD,
+ 0.05%
and earn a ton of money.

He was working on this woman’s house when ours was collapsing. He bought her things and hung out with her when he was at “work”.

Apparently, the woman was on a bank account and her bitcoin account – totaling over $ 50,000 at the time of her death. He had no will.

Am I entitled to these accounts? I am in Washington State.

Thanks in advance.

Wife

Dear woman,

Typically, joint bank accounts can avoid probate. But there is a legal precedent in Washington state that says a spouse cannot not have the right to transfer half of the interest on bank funds to a third party without the knowledge of the other spouse. Thus, financial institutions should be notified of your husband’s death and your existence.

Washington is a community property state. As such, anything earned during marriage is the property of the community in your state, and estates and divorce courts would look down on those who choose to circumvent these laws. Even though these accounts had rights of survivorship, there is good reason to believe that you own half of these accounts ($ 25,000).

“In Washington, an account that is referred to simply as ‘joint tenancy’ should pass as a joint tenancy with rights of survivorship for the person (s) on the account who survive the deceased account holder,” the firm said. lawyers Stokes Lawrence. “However, there are no guarantees, and disagreements over these accounts frequently end in litigation.”

It is a surreal and cruel betrayal to find out that someone you believed to be one thing turned out to be another. Part of me is hooked on the double life of your late husband, and the other part of me wonders why estimators for paving companies have so much free time. Presumably, because he didn’t need to be in an office from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and was on the road a lot.

I remember the woman whose identity was stolen from an early age. She’s been trolled by a mysterious villain her entire life. She did everything she could to change her passwords and protect her personal information. It wasn’t until years later that she found out that the person piling up the bills on her behalf and wreaking havoc among debt collectors was her own mother.

This discovery that the person we most believe in has a secret life raises questions about whether we can really to know other people or, for that matter, ourselves. At the very least, this letter is another reminder that people are notoriously unpredictable. I hope you are learning to trust again. I believe there are many, many good people out there outweighing the bad.

Act quickly. After your late husband’s girlfriend withdraws money from the account, it will be more difficult and costly to get it back.

Yoyou can email The Moneyist for any financial and ethical questions related to the coronavirus at [email protected], and follow Quentin Fottrell on Twitter.

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