Consumer complaint received 2016-07-08
Company: TD BANK US HOLDING COMPANY
State: NY
Product: Bank account or service
Sub-product: Other bank product/service
Issue: Account opening, closing, or management

Complaint:
On XXXX XXXX, 2016 my aunt passed away who had XXXX bank accounts with TD Bank. Prior to her passing she told me that me & my son were named beneficiaries to all XXXX accounts plus others in other banks. On XXXX XXXX, 2016 my son & I went into the TD XXXX XXXX, NY branch to claim the accounts. We were told by the customer service rep that we were not the beneficiaries & that there were none listed & that we would need to go to XXXX Court to get Letters of Testementary to be able to get any information on these accounts. Since these accounts were totaling over XXXX we had no choice but to hire a Law Firm to handle the estate. The law Firm had to contact all immed family member plus the witnesses to the will & this caused much hardships for me & my son. After 3-4 months I was finally named Administrator of my aunts estate & given the paperwork from the NY XXXX Court that was needed to handle TD Bank. I went into Td Bank in XXXX XXXX, NY XXXX after leaving my lawyers office to close out these XXXX accounts & I requested to see all beneficiary forms attached to these accounts. At 1st the customer service rep tried telling me I had no right to see them, even with my letters of Testementary from the XXXX court. I called my Lawyer XXXX who did not agree with the bank & the Rep went to confer with the Bank Manager. He then came back & apologized that an error occurred. And showed me there in fact were Beneficiary forms for all XXXX accounts & that me & my son were the named beneficiarys. The original person made an error. I informed the bank of the Legal expenses I occurred from their mistake & told them I wanted to be reimbursed for those expenses ... They handed me a check made out to the estate of my aunt at that time as well, even after finding out there were in fact beneficiaries. They contacted their legal department & said I would hear back in a few days. My lawyer made me go back & demand payment to the beneficiarys as that is how payment should have been applied to begin with. The legal department 2 days later agreed to make XXXX checks to the beneficiaries and replaced the checks correctly. The legal department requested that my lawyer send them an invoice for services rendered for the estate. Which he did. They further asked for documentation of all work conducted & paid on the estate. Today my lawyer called me to say TD banks legal department decision is to not pay my legal fee 's incurred by their mistake and is trying to say that I would have needed to go to probate anyway and refuses to pay me my legal fee 's for their error. I can only imagine it is due to seeing her will which nothing actually passed thru, which we sent them a copy of. There is nothing else in the estate as all the other bank accounts were named beneficiaies to me and my son, her house was owned as rights of survivorship with me. I am filing my inventory with the XXXX court next week that has a XXXX balance of inventory as there is nothing in the estate.

Company response to consumer: Closed with non-monetary relief