Consumer complaint received 2022-10-13
Product: Checking or savings account — Checking account
Issue: Managing an account — Funds not handled or disbursed as instructed
Company: JPMORGAN CHASE & CO. (NC)

My father had a trust checking account with Chase for which he was the trustee. He passed away in XXXX of 2022 and, under the terms of the trust, my brother and I became the trustees. 

I live in North Carolina and my brother lives in Florida, about an hour from where my father had lived and banked. When I notified Chase of my father 's death and the need to change the trustees on the account, they insisted that my brother and I had to go to a Chase branch to sign a trust certificate, despite the fact that the Chase branch closest to me was nearly 2 and 1/2 hours away, and, as it turned out, the one-page certificate said nothing that the trust instrument did not already say. I drove the 2 and 1/2 hours and signed the document. Rather than having me sign a signature card for the account at that time, they let me drive 2 and 1/2 hours back home, and then told me that I'd have to go to a branch again to sign the signature card, even though they already had a signature card signed by me for another account. My brother was able to sign the certificate and signature card at a branch close to his home in Florida, so I decided not to drive another five hours for that purpose. 

My father 's will called for the funds in the trust account to be distributed equally among myself, my brother, and my sister, less any advances any of us had taken. Chase repeatedly cancelled checks written ( XX/XX/XXXX, XX/XX/XXXX, and XX/XX/XXXX or XXXX ) and blocked online access to the account, despite the fact that when the first check they identified as " suspicious '' was verified, they were told that 2 additional checks between {$50000.00} and around {$60000.00} would be issued. ( One notification of a cancellation is attached as an example ). In conversations with Chase representatives, they repeatedly said the cancellations were done by " they system, '' not any person who worked for Chase. When a payment was incorrectly cancelled on XX/XX/XXXX, we were told that we had to reissue the check despite the fact that Chase had erroneously cancelled it- and we were told that it would go though when we reissued it. We did so and the account reflected that it was " pending review '' for three days and then it was cancelled again. When Chase was called, they again said, " the system '' was responsible and there was nothing they could do. They also said that when we saw the " pending review '' designation, we should have called them, which is ridiculous because the words " pending review '' give no indication whatsoever that the owner of the account should call about that designation. 

All of these repeated cancellations caused us to have to spend hours on the phone with Chase simply to try to execute our father 's testamentary wishes and we still never got that accomplished as we gave up on getting the third check issued after three times and closed the account. That caused wasted time and emotional distress to people processing their father 's recent death. The repeated denials of access to the account and refusal to process the payments over two weeks or more amounted to constructive theft of the funds by Chase. Customers should either be able to opt-out of banks ( and credit card companies ) fraud protection processes, or those processes should be regulated in such a way that human intervention allows customers to simply and efficiently verify transactions and have them proceed ; when the bank wrongly cancels a transaction, it should have the responsibility for taking corrective action when it has wrongly cancelled a transaction.