IBA Compliance Connection

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A safe deposit box customer recently died. His sister is executor of his estate. She has asked us for the date on which the customer added a joint owner to the box (his fiancée). There seem to be bad feelings between the sister and the deceased customer’s fiancée. Can we provide that information? Our safe deposit account agreement treats boxes with multiple lessees as joint tenancies with rights of survivorship, so we took the position that we could not provide this information because the fiancée now is the sole lessee on the box.

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admin

We believe that you may provide the requested information to your customer’s executor, since she is requesting information about an event that occurred before his death. The executor would not have any right to information about the safe deposit box account after the date of death.

The federal privacy regulations permit banks to disclose account information to “persons holding a legal or beneficial interest relating to the consumer” and “persons acting in a fiduciary or representative capacity on behalf of the consumer,” such as an executor. Consequently, we believe that the executor of your customer’s estate can access information about the safe deposit account up to the date of the customer’s death.

However, we note that the executor has no right to information about transactions that took place after her brother’s date of death. Because the safe deposit box account was a joint account with a right of survivorship, it automatically passed to the surviving lessee (your customer’s fiancée) on the date of death. Revealing information about account changes or transactions after that date would violate the surviving lessee’s privacy rights.

For resources related to our guidance, please see:

  • Regulation P, 12 CFR 1016.15(a)(2)(iv) (A bank may disclose nonpublic personal information “(iv) to persons holding a legal or beneficial interest related to the consumer; or (v) to persons acting in a fiduciary or representative capacity on behalf of the consumer; . . .”)

  • Joint Tenancy Act, 765 ILCS 1005/2(a) (“When a deposit in any bank or trust company transacting business in this State has been made or shall hereafter be made in the names of 2 or more persons payable to them when the account is opened or thereafter, the deposit or any part thereof or any interest or dividend thereon may be paid to any one of those persons whether the other or others be living or not, and when an agreement permitting such payment is signed by all those persons at the time the account is opened or thereafter the receipt or acquittance of the person so paid shall be valid and sufficient discharge from all parties to the bank for any payments so made.”)