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Do not use BNY Mellon as your broker.
Jan. 30th, 2012 05:40 pmI just had this conversation with them.
The owner of an investment account passed away several years ago, and the executrix is a friend of mine who's sick and has asked me to pretend to be her on the phone. I'm not doing a very good job; I keep referring to "myself" in the third person. As luck would have it, however, no one at a brokerage ever pays any attention to anything you say.
I was trying to get them to send an account statement to her, as he's been deceased for long enough that the mail's stopped forwarding. I was told that they don't have a procedure for doing that. They'll be happy to send another statement out to the dead guy, though! "Why? What would be the point?" The guy didn't know, either. It's just, you know, standard procedure.
He suggested I write BNY Mellon a letter, something which I've already done on her behalf several times. "What would that accomplish? I mean, is there some sort of documentation you still need? I've already sent a death certificate and the court order appointing her - me, I mean, court order appointing me." No, he said, no documentation necessary. Just a letter.
"So if I send you a letter, and it says that Warren Buffett's dead and I'm his executrix - and it's on like a really serious-looking piece of stationary - you'll just turn his account over to me, right?" No, he said, because Warren Buffett knows better than to enter into a business relationship with BNY Mellon. This bit of the conversation did not actually take place outside of my head, though, so that second part may be wrong.
So I wrote a meaner letter than before on the firm's letterhead, and got Dad to sign it. She has not, in fact, retained Dad, so this represents a new and more drastic step vis-a-vis arguing with BNY Mellon. You drove me to it, guy who doesn't understand about dead people. (Worry not, she read and approved my letter before I sent it off.)
It seems like this is an actual policy rather than a single confused person, because this is actually the second time someone at BNY Mellon has said it to me. It happened last fall, when we were just beginning this process, and I just wrote it off as a New Guy problem. Looks like no.
The owner of an investment account passed away several years ago, and the executrix is a friend of mine who's sick and has asked me to pretend to be her on the phone. I'm not doing a very good job; I keep referring to "myself" in the third person. As luck would have it, however, no one at a brokerage ever pays any attention to anything you say.
I was trying to get them to send an account statement to her, as he's been deceased for long enough that the mail's stopped forwarding. I was told that they don't have a procedure for doing that. They'll be happy to send another statement out to the dead guy, though! "Why? What would be the point?" The guy didn't know, either. It's just, you know, standard procedure.
He suggested I write BNY Mellon a letter, something which I've already done on her behalf several times. "What would that accomplish? I mean, is there some sort of documentation you still need? I've already sent a death certificate and the court order appointing her - me, I mean, court order appointing me." No, he said, no documentation necessary. Just a letter.
"So if I send you a letter, and it says that Warren Buffett's dead and I'm his executrix - and it's on like a really serious-looking piece of stationary - you'll just turn his account over to me, right?" No, he said, because Warren Buffett knows better than to enter into a business relationship with BNY Mellon. This bit of the conversation did not actually take place outside of my head, though, so that second part may be wrong.
So I wrote a meaner letter than before on the firm's letterhead, and got Dad to sign it. She has not, in fact, retained Dad, so this represents a new and more drastic step vis-a-vis arguing with BNY Mellon. You drove me to it, guy who doesn't understand about dead people. (Worry not, she read and approved my letter before I sent it off.)
It seems like this is an actual policy rather than a single confused person, because this is actually the second time someone at BNY Mellon has said it to me. It happened last fall, when we were just beginning this process, and I just wrote it off as a New Guy problem. Looks like no.
