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My wife passed away on the 17th of November 2022. I just sold her car to Carvana. When I got home I noticed the check was made out to my wife ($4,000). We did not have a joint bank account. I do my banking with Chime. How do I handle this?

Peter Mortensen
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Tony Piotrowski
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3 Answers3

64

I'm sorry for your loss. In this case, you give it to her estate executor (if that is not you) who would then deposit the check in her account or in the account of her estate.

Dilip Sarwate
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littleadv
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11

Once I was officially appointed the executor of my mother's estate, I was able to open an estate account in her name. Then I could deposit checks made out to her and write checks to distribute the account to her heirs.

stannius
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-24

This might not be strictly legal but I would not hesitate to fake your wife's signature on the back of the check signing it over to you, and then deposit the check in your own account. Who is going to object?

Edited to add: In response to the many comments, I did not intend to advocate anything underhanded. I only meant to suggest that there is no harm in circumventing some red tape, assuming that the OP is the legitimate heir, that there is no dispute about that, and that the money will eventually be his in any event. Of course those assumptions might not always be correct, but for cases involving the death of a spouse (at least in the jurisdictions I'm aware of), they are likely to be.

And in this case, that likelihood is considerably increased by what the OP has told us about the source of the funds, namely "I had just sold her car". Apparently the OP is already operating under the assumption that his wife's property is now legitimately his.

WillO
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