Wells Fargo froze my account

[jribe]

i have accounts at wells fargo as well and mine were not frozen. I didn't have any debt wtith them besides student loans (staffords) which is probably why nothing was frozen. My DD goes in there too-so i was intitially worried reading on this board that people said there accounts were frozen. So it's not across the board that wells fargo will freeze accounts; just sounds like if you have credit with them..

[jshep]

There was another member here "planatery" I believe. He went through the same thing with WF. It did not have anything to do with cross colateralization issues, rather WF took it upon themselves to freeze the account on behalf of the trustee, without the trustee requesting this action. .

I will see if I can find that thread, it sounds like it would be very helpful in my situation.

My understanding right now, which is very limited due to the fact that this only happened Friday night, is that what you describe is exactly what is happening to me.

The case only got filed Wednesday afternoon. I hadn't even received it myself in the mail yet (I got it on Saturday). The trustee had just been assigned, probably on Thursday. My meeting of creditors isn't until December 10th. Then all of a sudden the account got shut down with no warning or explanation 48 hours after the case is filed. I should also mention that I live 30 miles from Los Angeles... so, it's not like I'm in a small town where five people file a year.

I'll know a lot more tomorrow and will post what I find out. It will be interesting to see how long it takes to get access to the money. This is just money left over from the first monthly paycheck I got coming off unemployment. It was just there to take care of our general living expenses... which now I don't have, so I can't do things like buy food until I get another paycheck in December.

I have found and looked over the thread now. It sounds like the same exact situation, even down to the fact that I have a child in the home that is ill. One thing I saw in the thread is that Wells Fargo only does this on accounts with more than $5K... my account had approximately $3,500 at the time of the freeze.

[Lajazz947]

What of Bank of America? Will they do the samething???? I dont remember if I signed or read anything that said "cross-collateralization" on it. They hold my 2nd and 2 cc I can no longer pay.

Get your money out ASAP.

WF did the same thing to me before I filed and they did indeed have a cross collateralization agreement in the fine print.

[eddiep]

There was another member here "planatery" I believe. He went through the same thing with WF. It did not have anything to do with cross colateralization issues, rather WF took it upon themselves to freeze the account on behalf of the trustee, without the trustee requesting this action. Planatary got his money back eventually but he had to contact the trustee and have him authorize the release of the money. Did you use your exemptions to protect this money? Do a search there was an entire thread start to finish.

[jshep]

sorry to hear this, i empathize with your situation. i must say this is exactly why that earlier this year when i decided i would need to file, i opened up a checking account with a credit union, changed my direct deposit, and let the WF checking account dwindle down to a couple of bucks. after a couple of months they closed it. i still have not filed but i get 6 or so calls a day from WF about their CC I stopped paying.

I have checking and savings accounts at two other banks, so I could have moved the money over. I just had no idea about the policy of Wells Fargo on this. It seemed like I did so much research before taking the plunge, but this was a major blunder on my part to not know the bank I was leaving the last of our money in is well known for doing this kind of thing.

It's a whole new world for us, and we had to learn a lot quickly to figure out what we should do. A year ago I had the kind of credit that allowed me to buy a brand new Suburban for $60,000 and drive it right off the lot the same day. Of course, I thought the old company would make the payments like they had on all of my cars for 22 years. We just went from doing really well for a really long time to having everything change. The old company provided services to other businesses, and when the economy went bad, about half of our clients went out of business. Some of these clients had been going for 40 years and more... then, poof. Just gone along with my job and income.

I really wish I had found this forum about six months ago. I doubt I would have made that mistake if I had read the messages here first. It's just hard finding things on the web. Any time you type anything into Google about bankruptcy you just get thousands of lawyers and credit schemes. I got here today by searching for "wells fargo bankruptcy freeze". I'm really happy to have found this resource, even this late in the process.

[dealingsdone]

Interesting thread, I'm a little concerned now.

I have a wells fargo account that i use to pay the majority of my bills. I'm going to my 341 next week chapter 7 bk, so I have been in the system for a month or so, and to this point wells fargo has not closed my account. If they do close my account it will create trouble for me. Generally I keep under 1000 dollars in the account. Should I be doing something now or has the time they would have done something already come and gone?

Thanks,

[junker]

absolutely,,,get your money out of b of a if you have cc,s with them and are not paying them,,,, there are many posts here that will tell you the same thing....NEVER put your money in a bank that you have other accts with..and are not going to pay them...they WILL take it...just like the op here....

[sufferingAZ]

What of Bank of America? Will they do the samething???? I dont remember if I signed or read anything that said "cross-collateralization" on it. They hold my 2nd and 2 cc I can no longer pay.

[albacore44]

sorry to hear this, i empathize with your situation. i must say this is exactly why that earlier this year when i decided i would need to file, i opened up a checking account with a credit union, changed my direct deposit, and let the WF checking account dwindle down to a couple of bucks. after a couple of months they closed it. i still have not filed but i get 6 or so calls a day from WF about their CC I stopped paying.

[DeadManCrawling]

WF is notorious on this board for this type of thing.

You may actually have other accounts with them, and not even know it. For instance, you may have a card that is backed by WF but has another store name one it. Home Depot, or Kmart or Rooms To Go, or whatever.

Your agreement, if that is the case, allows cross-collateralization. This means that they can take money from ANY account you have to pay past due balances on OTHER accounts.

Of course, I do not know your exact situation, nor do I know which companies WF might work with in this fashion.

The automatic sstay should have prevented this, but, again, WF is notorious for this sort of thing.

I recall some other posters here who stated that WF froze their accounts on filing if the account had money exceeding a certain limit.

In any case, call your attorney, and do please share what you learn. I am sorry I could not offer more information on this.

[jshep]

I was fully employed for over 30 years, made great money, and had really great credit.

Then the company I worked at for 22 years closed down at the end of last year. I got a new job right away, making the same money. Then, in April the new company started having trouble for the same reasons the old one did, and I was laid off and drew unemployment from April until October.

To make matters worse, I had company credit cards at the old company, and they went after me personally. Even with being laid off that long, I probably could have worked it out and continued to pay my own bills, but I couldn't pay the bills of my former employer on top of them.

So.... on Wednesday of this week my wife and I filed Chapter 7.

Over the next couple of days things seemed like they were going fine. I went to the ATM and withdrew some money on Friday morning and the account was fine. Late Friday afternoon, my wife called me from the market, and said that the Wells Fargo Debit card had been declined.

I went online and looked at the account, and it showed me with a zero balance. I should have had most of my first paycheck back from unemployment in it... but the money was "gone".

I called Wells Fargo and they referred me to a phone number to get more information about my "situation". I called the number, but of course, they were closed for the weekend.

I called the customer service line back and the Rep said that it was related to my recent filing for Bankruptcy.

I have two credit accounts with Wells Fargo, one is a Visa card and I owed no money at all on that for the last several months. The other was my home equity line, which I had kept paying through being unemployed, and have never been late on.

I did some reading up on the situation, which brought me to this website. I found another article written by a BK attorney saying that both Wells Fargo and Union Bank were the only banks he knew of that will automatically freeze a checking account when they learn that a customer has filed bankruptcy.

My own lawyer said something to me earlier in the process about getting out money out of the Wells Fargo account, but the way I understood her was that I should do that if I was behind in any payments with them.. .and I wasn't.

The money they froze was the only money we had left, and I had it there to do things like pay the house payment (inlcuding the home equity line with them), buy groceries, pay the car payment (with someone else, but also not late)... etc. Now I can't do any of that.

I was able to contact our attorney on Friday night via email, and she wrote back that she would "try and get the money released on Monday". But, we have had to go through the weekend with no money.

Of course, if I had understood that this might happened, I would have done things differently... but, this has really put us in a bind. The Attorney that wrote the article says that he recommends that his clients keep their money in a bank other than Wells Fargo or Union Bank, since he does not know of any other banks that do this.

I have engaged in an email thread with Wells customer service reps over the weekend telling them that they were putting me and my family in an emergency situation. The best they can tell me is to call on Monday. I asked if there was a place on their website that I could read up on the policy and how it works, and they said there was not, I just have to wait out the weekend.

I don't know how what they are doing could be legal. The Trustee didn't order the acount frozen, and I'm not late on any payments to Wells Fargo. What it does do is guarantee that I'll be late on any bills I get between now and when they let my money go, and nobody can tell me how long that might end up being.

What a mess.