My Grandmother Opened Accounts in My Name. One Person Is Keeping Me From Accessing Them.

Pay Dirt Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Chanakon Laorob/iStock/Getty Images Plus. Pay Dirt is Slate’s money advice column. Have a question? Send it to Kristin and Ilyce here. (It’s anonymous!) Dear Pay Dirt, My grandmother is someone who has a lot of money due to her husband making a lot and investing well while he was alive. Some of these investments include stocks and investment accounts that were opened in my name. I know these accounts exist, but do not have account numbers for any except one that I know has about $50,000. However, my father, in the interest of furthering his own wealth hoarding, has persuaded my grandmother that I’m irresponsible with money, and so she will not give me account information or turn control of the accounts over to me. (I promise I’m not irresponsible with money. In fact,, I’ve been told by multiple friends and family that I’m the most frugal person they know.) Part of the reason I’m so frugal is because I am a mid-20s person terrified for my future, given the general state of the economy right now. Getting control of these investments (and by extension, knowing how much is in them) would be a massive weight off my back in terms of knowing whether I’ll ever be able to truly live comfortably and retire. However, I’m also scared that my dad will try to steal the money from me (if he hasn’t tried to already). The man’s not above shady dealings or identity theft; he’s done both before. How do I get information about the accounts in my name when my family refuses to provide it? And is there anything I can do to prevent my father from stealing from me upon my grandmother’s death, other than running to the nearest Fidelity the minute I find out she’s passed? —I’m not Entitled, My Name Is on the Account! Dear I’m Not Entitled, I’m going to start with the part you won’t like: Accounts that are “opened in your name” may not actually be yours. Whether that money is yours or not hinges on what type of account she opened, and right now you don’t know. If she opened an account she owns and simply named you as beneficiary, she controls it and can change her mind tomorrow. But if your grandmother funded a custodial account, such as a UTMA or UGMA when you were a minor, that money became legally yours at 18 or 21 depending on your state, and she’s obligated to turn it over. An estate attorney may be able to tell you what’s out there. Bring the institution names, roughly when you think the accounts were opened, and how you think they are titled. Given your father’s sketchy behavior through the years, you should also to take immediate action to protect yourself. Freeze your credit at all three bureaus (experian.com, equifax.com and transunion.com) and request an IRS Identity Protection Pin. All of these actions are free and you should do this regardless of what happens with the accounts. Unfortunately, your father intervened to convince your grandmother you’re bad with money. You think she believed him. But, did she? You won’t know until you go see her alone. I wouldn’t lead with the accounts. That looks grabby. Instead, talk to her about your life. Show her who you are. Talk to her about your budget, your savings, what you earn, what you’re afraid of. Tell her you’ve been frugal because you’re in your 20s and scared about your future. How she responds to you will tell you all you need to know about what he’s been saying. If you’re still not sure, ask her outright: Do you think I’m irresponsible with money? If she says yes, ask her why. I wouldn’t dwell on this if you haven’t seen her in a while, unless she appears interested in putting all of her financial cards on the table. The best way to counteract your father’s bad behavior is to show up repeatedly and invest in your relationship with her. If that’s what you want to do. Just keep one thing in mind: Until you figure this out definitively, you should plan for a life without any of that cash. Because that’s likely what you’ll wind up with. Please keep questions short (<150 words), and don‘t submit the same question to multiple columns. We are unable to edit or remove questions after publication. Use pseudonyms to maintain anonymity. Your submission may be used in other Slate advice columns and may be edited for publication. Dear Pay Dirt, In the past, my late grandma would typically give everyone in the family cash for Christmas. But there was one year when she gave us all a few silver coins. I know nothing about silver as an investment, so I’ve just kept mine in a lockbox since then. Every so often when I go in there to get an important document and see the coins, I wonder if I should be doing something with them. How do people typically handle silver? Should I be watching values, and if so, how/where? Or is silver best as a long term “set it and forget it” item that is usually sold waaaaay down the line? —Stumped by Silver Dear Stumped by Silver, Before you think about value and what to do with Granny’s gift, find out what you actually own. Coins are usually one of two things: bullion, like American Silver Eagles, worth roughly the metal in them, or older U.S. coins that may carry collector value well above what the metal is worth. Worth knowing: pre-1965 dimes, quarters and half dollars are 90 percent silver. Start with your phone. Google Lens will often identify a coin from a photo in seconds. You can also snap pictures and upload them to an AI assistant like Claude or ChatGPT, which can usually tell you the type, the silver content, and roughly what the metal is worth. They may also be able to tell you if the coins are unusual or may have significant value. From there, two free tools can be helpful. Coinflation tracks the live melt value of U.S. circulating coinage, pre-1965 silver, and gold coins. For estimating collector value, the NGC Coin Price Guide catalogs values for U.S. and world coins from 1600 forward. PCGS publishes a comparable guide, updated daily. What none of these online tools can do is grade condition, and condition is the basis of collector value. If your coins look like they might be worth more than the metal value, pay for a real appraisal. As for watching the silver market, buckle up. Silver’s 52-week range has run from roughly $37 to nearly $122 an ounce, and it’s trading around $64 as we went to press. That’s a wild and frustrating ride if you’re trying to time the market. I don’t want to get your hopes up too high. A few coins in a lockbox generally aren’t an investment position. Most are a keepsake with some nominal value. Silver pays no dividend and costs nothing to hold, which makes “set it and forget it” the right way to think about it. —Ilyce Classic Prudie I recently had our second baby (the first is 14 months). My mother-in-law volunteered to stay at our house with our first while we were in the hospital. I felt a bit nervous about this, as my MIL has pretty severe anxiety and doesn’t often seem to be comfortable with what I would consider basic care tasks. I talked it through with my husband and he helped me see that I was really just feeling nervous about being away from my first baby for so long. Talking about anyone else staying with her didn’t make me feel any more comfortable. MIL also repeatedly stated she was very comfortable doing it and would enjoy the opportunity to help us .C-section day comes and everything is smooth enough during the day. Then from 3 to 8 p.m., his mother calls six times with questions, sounding increasingly frazzled and with the baby screaming in the background by the last call. Never miss new Slate Advice columns Get the latest from Prudie and our columnists in your inbox each weekday, plus special bonus letters on Saturdays. Advice Personal Finance Relationships