Finances and Banking for a Person with Disabilities

In this day and age of online banking, identity theft, hacking and vulnerability we are all at risk of something happening to our accounts and credit cards, all of which can have a negative impacg on our credit scores. 

Recently, I worked with a young man who had a terrible incident happen that sent him into a tailspin. He has a regular checking/debit account with one of the largest banks in the country. Unbeknownst to him, someone hacked into his account, deposited a forged paycheck for $18,000, rather than his usual check of $1,800. This person also tried to draw funds against this check and whatever was already in his account. They managed to steal about $2,700 and wreaked havoc in his life. He suddenly had no access to his money, no way to honor his automatic pay bills and had to launch an on-going investigation into what happened.  

This is a person who is already somewhat fragile, prone to stress-induced anxiety and depression and has some learning disabilities. You can only imagine what a disaster this was to his life. He thought he would be fired when he told his boss about the fraudulent check that included a bad forgery of his signature. Fortunately, this did not happen.  Instead, he had to set up a new bank account and everything that goes with that process, spending many hours on the phone to get it all done. His parents spent hours at the bank as well and were told the investigation could take up to 90 days to resolve. He could not deposit his current paycheck since he could not use the cash machine because his new cards weren’t activated yet and he got home too late from his job to physically go to an actual bank.

Now imagine if this happened to you and how upset you would be. Then take a person with disabilities and magnify that distress many times over. The banks are not set up to really help a person with disabilities or address its own vulnerabilities to corruption of accounts. Who has to pay the price for this? What if there had not been an adult willing to advocate for him and guide him through this morass? 

In these days of technology, we really have to consider how to protect the most vulnerable among us, whether they are members of our family or communities.  We need to come up with solutions and protocols to help navigate through this stressful and impactful labyrinth. This applies to banking, credit cards, regular bills and accounts, everything we take for granted in our everyday lives. Our commercial institutions need to be more accountable and as well.

—Carol K. Kennedy, Ph.D.