@DaveInAZ wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
@Trudy Thank you for answering a question I was wondering about myself. As someone on a CMHS HCBS waiver, I was curious. Your post prompted me to look it up and it seems like this stems from SSI saying they won't count it for 12 months and SSI recipients all get Medicaid so it automatically trickles down to anyone who gets Medicaid.
As for the article in question, nobody can take money from anyone's bank account without a pre-existing judgment with a garnishment order. Banks aren't going to leave themselves open to liability by doing something that they aren't legally allowed to do. People who have garnishment orders know they have one and will most likely pull the money ASAP anyway.
A number of banks beg to differ - (NY Post)
- USAA kept $2,400 from a Minneapolis woman and her disabled veteran husband because they had an overdrawn account, according to the paper. The woman was reportedly planning to use the money to pay rent and buy formula for her infant daughter.
- Benji Pedro of South Carolina told the Times that Safe Federal Credit Union kept his entire $1,200 stimulus payment to help pay back an account that was overdrawn by $2,650 because he had forgotten to cancel a pair of music subscriptions.
- Another woman had to battle with Digital Credit Union in Massachusetts to keep all of the $2,400 that she and her husband were due to receive, the Times reported. The credit union reportedly kept $1,000 at first because of an overdrawn account
The USAA story was pretty big, I saw it several times in my FB and Google News feeds. The disabled veteran husband claimed his account was overdrawn last year due to fraudulent activity but USAA denied their fraud claim. After the publicity of the story suspended all collection of overdrawn account retroactively. And DCU also relented after publicity. Yes, an overdrawn account is money owed, but these are extraordinarily difficult times for many, be extraordinary.
Overdrawn accounts are entirely different than a debt collector grabbing funds. Repayment of that overdraft is in your bank terms when you open the account, regardless of the situation that caused it.
