Dear LPG,

I think that most readers will agree that the majority of the people who read your pages are grandparents, and it is blatantly obvious, although sometimes forgotten by our children, that you can’t be a grandparent without having been a parent first; not to mention a young adult in need of their parents help before that.  

I have just read an article on your pages about the idea of opening a joint bank account with your children (►►►) , which sounds like a good idea, but even now you don’t have to go far to hear stories about the way that some of our children used the bank of mum and dad before they were able to stand on their own two feet.  When our children were young adults, I bet that I was not the only parent who found it pretty hard to say no when they came to us with those stories that started with all their problems and ended with a request for a little financial help.

By the time we get to be pensioners there are usually more twists and turns happening in the generation below, because of the generation below that, and it is easy to watch from the outside while injecting a bit of cash here and there, where it is needed and while we have sufficient finances and the presence of mind to know what is going on.

Wills are there to ensure that what we leave behind gets to the people that we want to leave it to, but what about that gap between the two?

Having read what KC had to say on the subject, I would like to go back to something that he touched on.  I agree that his plan is not a bad one to follow, but would remind all those grandparents out there to keep an eye on what is going on in such an account, as any abuse of it will give a good indication as to which child you can trust when that time comes.  

It is so easy to miss the changes in your children when you don’t see them so often, and once they have become involved in their own life’s complexities.  From what I have heard, middle-aged children sometimes feel that they have a divine right to help themselves especially when money is so available, and putting a joint bank account in place nice and early might just be a good test of this aspect of their individual characters.

FM, Southwark