Commingling of finances

[fantonledzepp 159]

Hello, my wife and I have been married almost two years now, and she's had her Conditional Residence for a year now. Ever since she got a job we've been having some complications over monies deposited into our joint checking account. After a couple of pay periods, she and I agreed that once this whole immigration business is over she wants her own checking account, and end our joint account. Well, yesterday she and I had a big confusion over the allocation of certain funds and we were quite flustered. In the end, we figured it out, but it was annoying to say the least.

My question is this: can we end our joint account now and have her open her own account? We still have another 9 months before she is eligible to remove conditions, is it absolutely vital to have a joint account? We have plenty of other evidence, we file taxes as "married filing jointly", both our names are on our utilities, she's my beneficiary on all my life insurance policies, she's an authorized user on one of my credit cards, etc...

Will it be a big deal, or is it better just to rough it out, pull out my hair, and just wait after conditions have been removed?

[Merrytooth 5,748]

why can't she has personal and joint accounts at the same time?

[fantonledzepp 159]

Because that's the plan, end our joint account and have her open her own account.

Edited July 19, 2014 by fantonledzepp

[Merrytooth 5,748]

I'm still confused by your statement.

You can open a personal account without closing the joint account.

Both of you have to agree to % of salary to be contributed to the joint account to pay for the joint stuff like rent/mortgage, utilities, cable, cell phone bills, grocery ..

[fantonledzepp 159]

Yes. however that is not the plan. We will end our joint account and she will open her own account. As for how we actually pay for everything, that is not the issue here. I'm just asking if having a joint account is crucial evidence for removal of conditions.

[TBoneTX 45,536]

She can open her own account. Have her list you as the "POD" party (the bank will know what this is and what to do). Get a printout of the POD designation, and you're fine, si man.

If you haven't done this already: Draft wills, medical powers of attorney, HIPAA release forms, and other such documents in each other's name. These are highly overlooked yet slam-dunk proof for ROC. Do it now and don't wait till filing-time.

State-appropriate templates might be available at nolo.com or legalzoom.com (I presume that they are), and you might find templates available elsewhere on the Internet. Just make sure that they're valid for the state of Nueva York, etc.

[fantonledzepp 159]

Thank you TBone, that was great info. I will look into it.

I haven't done any of those! Draft a will, it sounds so adult. Ha! Medical Power of Attorney is something we'll to discuss as she probably won't want to pull the plug on me. I will look into these as well.

[Cheezees 1,514]

Closing a joint account might trigger an RFE even with lots of other evidence. I would weigh the risk of potentially delaying your case and the anxiety it creates against the ease of banking you'd like. Good luck!

[fantonledzepp 159]

Yep, this worries me. Perhaps it is best to just wait...

[unsmiley 111]

Maybe you can keep the joint account open with a token amount in it, and also open separate accounts.

[Mariam&Smith 45]

We didn't have any banking activities AT ALL. No problemo.

[BBCC 16]

My question is this: can we end our joint account now and have her open her own account? We still have another 9 months before she is eligible to remove conditions, is it absolutely vital to have a joint account? We have plenty of other evidence,

The co-mingling of domicile and finances are the most important indications that USCIS use as proof of a bona fide relationship. There are other indications, but these are the big ones. For this reason, yes, I would say it is vital to keep that joint account open when you file for ROC.

You could possibly compensate a lack of a joint bank account with accumulating some of the other documents, but why go to all that trouble? The joint account is a strong indicator to them.

For our ROC, we used our joint bank account that really didn't have a lot of financial transactions listed on the joint bank statement. This was not an issue to USCIS. They approved our I-751 with it, no questions asked. Because of this, perhaps you could consider each of you open your own separate bank accounts at the present time and still maintain separate finances if that is what you need to do. But just hang on to the joint account and keep a small amount of activity on it.

You will also want to use a statement from a joint bank account a little after that to file for Naturalization, assuing that is also in your plan.

It is a good idea to keep the joint account open only as long as you intend to file immigrations or petitions. Once you've concluded your business with USCIS, then go ahead and close the joint account.

Edited July 19, 2014 by BBCC

[Cheezees 1,514]

No. Joint bank accounts ARE NOT a necessity for applying for citizenship (naturalization based on marriage). You will be OK if your accounts are not joint after the issuance of the 10-yr green card. Before that, it is risky. Good luck

[fantonledzepp 159]

Thank you all for the suggestions. Having ease of banking vs. a complicated ROC process? I think we'd rather rough it out, keep our joint account and hopefully have an easy process. Our journey has been pretty easy so far, why mess that up?

She does plan on naturalizing and we were thinking on just ending our joint account after ROC; holding out another year until she's eligible to naturalize will probably leave me bald. Us having a joint account and individual accounts for ourselves seems like too much of a pain, we will keep that in the back of our minds though. I'm hoping that we just had a bad week and that it'll get easier as we go along, if it doesn't, we'll explore the three-accounts option.

[Harpa Timsah 13,258]

Why can't you change "the plan"?