Last November I discovered that my savings account with Bank of America, where my MIT pension had been regularly deposited since 2003, was mysteriously cleared out (“Bank of America’s Fraud Department,” November 15, 2010). Only a few dollars were left in it. Since then, I sent the bank many letters, which grew in indignation over time. I called them a number of times, as well, but I always got disconnected in the end. As there was no reply from anyone in the bank, I contacted the retirement office at MIT and complained about my misery. Soon afterwards, I got an electronic-mail message from the bank. The message was kind of short, but I was instructed to check with my ex-wife, with whom I shared the account.

Indeed, I let my ex-wife share my account in 1998, when she was in the States for a while, but did not have an account there at the time. She used it for a few months before returning to Britain. Our marriage fell apart by the end of 2000, and we officially divorced in 2003. And that was that, or so I thought. Bank statements kept coming only to me, and only I had a debit card for the account regularly sent to me. Thus, it did not even cross my mind that she could have anything to do with the mysterious disappearance of nearly everything that I had saved on the account until last October. I explained all this to the person who sent me the message from the bank, but there was no reply once again.

My MIT contact suggested that I contact my ex-wife, so that the mystery would be cleared. And this I did a couple of months ago, but there was no reply from her. Since then, I wrote to her on a few more occasions, explaining that I needed her response to return to the bank, so that it would start dealing with the fraud at last. There was no reply to any of my entreaties. Yesterday I wrote to her for the last time. The electronic-mail message to my ex-wife was a bit different this time, too. I repeated that I used to be sure that fraud was involved, but that I was not sure any longer about it on account of her stubborn silence.

Her swift if brief response surprised me. My last message was the first she had ever gotten from me, she said testily. Besides, she would never touch any account of mine, anyhow. She was indignant about the very suggestion. Nay, she was angry with me for even thinking that she could ever dip into my savings for any reason whatsoever. I thanked her at once and forwarded her message to my Bank of America contact. I also copied the message to my MIT contact. Now we knew that it was fraud, I argued rather strongly. And I demanded that the bank starts dealing with this issue after such a long delay.

A short while later I got a message from my ex-wife’s bookkeeper, though. She explained that she had discovered the joint account last October and let my ex-wife know about it. The bookkeeper asked my ex-wife whether the money could be taken out, and she said it could. To make her point stronger, the bookkeeper copied my ex-wife, as well. And so I forwarded the message to my Bank of America and MIT contacts once again. The bookkeeper sent me another message a short while later and promised to deposit the missing money back into my savings account as soon as possible.

After more than three months and innumerable letters, calls, and messages, the mystery is finally solved, even though it is not clear why the bank would not tell me in no uncertain terms that they knew exactly who had removed the money, as well as why the bookkeeper would remove the money from the joint account without getting in touch with me, too. In the end, it was a matter of carelessness or sloppiness on the part of my ex-wife. But here is my message for all those who may ever think of opening a joint account with their spouses: do not even think of it! Joint accounts be damned.