AboutJim Meadows Expertise I can respond to most questions concerning consumer and business relationships with US financial institutions. My expertise touches on deposit and loan issues and particularly on strategies to navigate through bank policies personell and practices. I have a degree in Economics, attended law school, Graduate Shool of Banking, and Commercial Lending and Compliance Schools.
Experience I have twenty years experience as a bank CEO. Most of those years were spent operating a bank focused primarly on serving consumer/retail needs. I helped pioneer deposit and loan products for low/moderate income individuals. I currently serve on multiple bank boards and am Chairman of a Commercial Bank in Atlanta.
Question I have two business bank accounts in which one gets deposited into every day, by my credit card processor, and the other I use to pay my taxes out of. Both of these accounts are corporate accounts in which my company owns, I am not the only signer on the account there are multiple owners. I have my personal account at the same bank, in which it is overdrawn. The bank froze my accounts and when I called to ask why they said they were going to use the money in the business account to offset the persoanl account. Can they do this? They also cashed a check the other day that was drawn on the personal account, from the business account. I asked why did they do this and they said the teller did not check the balance before of the personal account before she cashed the check, so they had to debit the business account to make there daily work balance. In way are these accounts tied together, I used the corporate tax identification number to open the business accounts and my social security number to open the personal account
Answer Lindsey, Typically the bank does not have the right to offset a corporate account to pay an item on a personal account. You should read the contracts you signed when you opened the account to make sure of your rights, then ask the bank in writing to reverse the transactions you describe.
Covering your personal overdraft will likely clear up the problem. If your personal account continues to be a "problem" for the bank there is a good chance they will close not only your personal account but perhaps the corporate accounts also. If that happens you would also probably ask, "can they do this". The answer is unfortunately yes, even though it may not be fair or right Jim
