<p>Look, answer the questions on FAFSA as asked. Fill in student’s income, assets, and other sources. Fill in parent’s assets. I have no problem, morally or legally, with a parent taking responsibility for all the money in a joint account if the parent’s name is listed first (or it’s just the parent’s account). The IRS allows it, the banking laws allow it, FAFSA just asks for assets and I think it is the proper to report it as a parent’s asset because that is the account holder. There is no instruction to not do it that way. It is a joint asset once it is deposited into a joint account. Any side arrangements are of no consequence in banking or IRS laws. That’s the risk of putting money into a joint account, you share responsibility.</p>
<p>I disagree with you. I don’t think a suit to recover money in a joint account would be easily won. The laws favor a clear decision, that money in a joint account is a joint asset. I can go down to my children’s bank and wipe out their accounts because my name is on them and I do not think a court would find for them and make me pay it back. It’s a joint account. Don’t share an account if you don’t trust the other person. Courts don’t want to unwind the $20 from my daughter’s sixth birthday from the $50 I contributed or the $100 my mother put in. The rules of the account are clear when you open it, that all account holders are joint and equal owners.</p>
<p>Click on the link I provided in my post #38. Then click on the embedded link to read the decision from the Maryland appeals court. Summation: a joint account does not necessarily mean joint ownership. It is not true, as you state above, that “any joint owner has a right to the entire account…,” and the link I provided clearly shows this. A joint account holder, who had legitimate access to all the funds in the account, was nevertheless found guilty of theft for taking money from the account that didn’t belong to her and using it for her own benefit, and she went to prison. A civil suit would be more likely to find a similar result because of the lower standard of proof. Granted, this is the interpretation of two courts based on the laws of one state. But I’m not inclined to think that the result here is in any way unusual or unprecedented.</p>