Bank Account Lien?

[dingdong]

Have you asked the Trustee if the BK code requires this of WF or even allows this type of action?

Have you read anything in the terms and conditions of your deposit account that grants WF the right to do this?

I just don't get why they can get away with it, when other banks don't do it?

Unless it is a right granted in the terms and conditions of your deposit account, it just doesn't seem legal.

I wonder if there might be cause for a class action lawsuit, or hell, just sue them in Small claims court for the max, I think the fee for a 7500.00 SC suit in CA is around 100.00. At least you would be causing them some grief and may even get a favorable judgement.

WF isn't a trustee, they have no business holding funds while you are in a BK stay.

[Planetary]

Have you tried faxing a copy of your schedules to WF legal, showing the exemption amount and stating that they are creating an extreme hardship for you and will be subject to damages?

I wish I could be more help, that really sucks. Why does WF think they can get away with that kind of Big Brother crap and other banks don't do it.

WF needs to lose business over these types of practices. I hope other readers close accounts with WF and move their business to a bank that has a brain and a conscience ( if there are any?)

I've had several long, heated conversations with Wells Fargo's BK dept and basically, their position is only the Trustee can authorize them to release some or all of the funds in the account. At this time, it's completely in the Trustee's hands.

[dingdong]

Have you tried faxing a copy of your schedules to WF legal, showing the exemption amount and stating that they are creating an extreme hardship for you and will be subject to damages?

I wish I could be more help, that really sucks. Why does WF think they can get away with that kind of Big Brother crap and other banks don't do it.

WF needs to lose business over these types of practices. I hope other readers close accounts with WF and move their business to a bank that has a brain and a conscience ( if there are any?)

[Planetary]

Here it is, Thursday and no progress getting my account unfrozen. The money in the account is all included in the California "wild card" portion of the filing so theoretically, there should be no problem, but at this point, who knows.......

I actually talked to my Trustee's secretary this morning and she said he "should" review our BK filing this afternoon. The fact that all the required paperwork has sat on his desk since the end of Monday is not encouraging.

[LuciluS]

I just wonder how long it will be before the large banks like WF, BoA, Citi & etc. buy out all the smaller banks? I think it will happen.

We use a bank who has a few branches in about a 50-75 mile proximity. Never had any problems with them. The even cashed a Corporation Check for me once, which is not legal LOL!

My ex has worked for a large bank for over 36 yrs. My son told me about 2 months ago that his Dad told him to move his checking account as changes were going to be made that might be be disadvantage to his account. I think what Ex might have been referring to was OD charges were going to higher as my son has that occur about every 3 months.

Luci

[willbfree]

I'll chime in about detesting WF too after they altered that check number of ours to cash it. Dirty, dirty bank IMO. Every time I pay our mortgage they ask me if I would like to open a checking account with them. I just give them a look like "yeah right" and walk off.

[dingdong]

Exactly!

They even charge a 7.50 fee to cash my paycheck here in California, which is illegal per California Labor code section 212. It is payable on demand without discount ( the fee). I was worried about my bank account being levied by the IRS while I owed them back taxes, so would just cash my check at the back every once in a while ( I get paid weekly) to keep my bank account balance low and then put money in and pay bills, and then it is low again so no big risk of seizure. Just a little proactive move on my part, I don't owe the IRS much anymore, so it isn't a huge risk, but just in case, I was cashing and depositing.

They are gonna get a nice little lawsuit from me, I have saved all my receipts from when they charged me fees to cash a check. 100 for the first violation, 200 for each subsequent violation. I have about 10,000.00 in damages so far.

I have been working on sticking it to WF for sometime.

I don't even care if I win, I want to be a thorn in WF side. They just continue to screw people!

[StartingOver08]

Whoa, Ding Dong! It used to be that a check meant "pay upon demand"...what happened with that concept????

Personally I hate Wells Fargo too - and all of their incarnations (like America's Servicing Co etc) - they are one of the worst bottom feeders....

[dingdong]

I am glad I could help. I hope it all works out for you.

I absolutely hate Wells Fargo.

I gave them a piece of my mind yesterday when they wouldn't cash my paycheck drawn on their bank I wanted to cash it and put the cash in my bank account ( at another bank)so that it would post immedately and I could use the funds with my onlne bill pay

They wouldn't do it and had to call corporate, which is on the East Coast and was closed. I had proper ID, was in my work uniform, and the check was less than 500.00! Not a huge risk. Then they tried to persuade me too open an account with them.

I told the teller about what had happened to you, Planetary, and told them I wouldn't open an account with them if they were the last ( expletive) bank on earth.

You know what the supervisor said to the teller, which she must have thought I couldn't hear?

"well, she deserves it for not opening an account with us"

BEEEYAAAATCH!!!

Guess who is getting a nice letter about her conduct sent to WF!

I hope your freeze ends soon and you tell WF where to stick their so called banking services.

Futher Muckers!

[Floridagail]

THanks for update, I still am in shock that it happen to you. I hope you can get your money back soon. I hope the bankruptcy judge in your case also gets involved and some action is taken against the bank.

[Planetary]

OK, here's an update on my case after a *really* long day's worth of trying to get this resolved.

First off, I want to thank "DingDong" for linking those pair of articles earlier in this thread. They really proved valuable in directing our attorney in the right direction as to how to approach getting our accounts un-frozen.

So the first thing I did was bypass our attorney on directly contacted our BK case Trustee via e-mail (his e-mail addy was on our case paperwork) explaining in clear, concise terms not just the situation, but also including the links to those articles as well as explaining the dire situation we're in as we basically have a couple hundred bucks cash to last us until who-knows-when due to all our money being tied up in the bank account lein. We also made a brief comment about how there's some evidence our attorney not only didn't warn us this may happen but that he may have botched our BK paperwork as well.

The Trustee must have immediately forwarded our e-mail with some comments of his own as our attorney knew we had contacted the Trustee and this morning was aggressively helping us do an ammendment to our Chapter 7 paperwork this morning and made sure the paperwork was in the Trustee's office before close of business today. he seemed pretty confident we'll get *all* our money in our accounts unfrozen fairly quickly, but we'll see.

Our attorney still insists he's never seen or heard of this sort of thing happening, especially with Wells Fargo.

[Floridagail]

Please keep us posted on WellsFargo . Is your attorney filing some papers to get the funds released.

[Doghouse]

From what I have read it looks like you might have to wait until either the Trustee sees that the funds are exempted or abandons the asset, but 14,000.00 is a lot of moolah and can make a trustee drool.

I had over 11,000 in my account when I filed. All of it was covered using California's wildcard exemption.

[walkthaplank]

Sorry to threadjack (and even in the wrong forum), does this only happen in CH7 cases, or will your bank do this in a CH13 filing?

To the OP, sorry to hear about this... I *HATE* Wells Fargo and when i use the word "HATE" it is because I cannot think of a harsher word.... ever since they had money vanish from my account with them and basically told us to pound sand. Fortunately my ex-wife was a real shrew and got the money out of them.... and we promptly opened up an account at another bank.

[dingdong]

I would also log into PACER look at your exemptions and see if your attorney exempted the cash, if not, you might want to see if your attorney can move some exemptions around to exempt it.


From what I have read it looks like you might have to wait until either the Trustee sees that the funds are exempted or abandons the asset, but 14,000.00 is a lot of moolah and can make a trustee drool.