I heard a very sad story earlier this week.  

A father opened up a savings account for his son at a local bank.  The son was leaving for college and the father wanted to be able to deposit funds for his son.  The account was in the names of both father and son with the father's good intention of providing spending money to his son when needed.

The son got mixed up with a bad kid.  The kid opened up a checking account at another local bank.  The kid wrote a bunch of checks on the checking account (which didn't have any money to cover the checks). The son deposited them into his savings account and the two of them immediately withdrew as much cash as they could.

Now, the father must file charges against his son to protect himself from being held responsible for the bad checks.  The father's credit will be damaged and it will be a lot of work to get it fixed.

We always hear of nightmare stories where a parent has co-signed on a loan for a child.  This story shows it can also be risky to even have a joint bank account with a child or anyone else for that matter.

Tina in Virginia