Be careful with joint bank accounts!

Yes, I also deal with inheritance cases, often international ones. Almost every time, I find myself dealing with the issue of a joint bank account and whether the sums in the account should go to the heirs of the deceased or to the other joint account holder. In this regard, I read a recent order of the Court of Cassation, No. 31904 of December 2025.

This order concerns a rather complex inheritance dispute that arose within a family and reached the Court of Cassation. At the heart of the dispute are two classic issues: the alleged “indirect donation” of a property to a daughter and the withdrawal of sums by the daughter from a joint bank account shortly before her mother's death.

On the first point, the Court of Cassation ruled that it is not sufficient to prove that the mother withdrew money close to the date of purchase of the property, nor that there was a close family relationship.

To speak of an indirect donation, concrete evidence is needed: that the money actually passed from the mother to the daughter, that it was intended for the purchase of the property and, above all, that the mother had the intention to donate it.

On the point relating to the withdrawal of sums from the current account, the other heirs demanded that the daughter make the withdrawn sum available again, so that it could be shared with them; the Court of Appeal of Palermo ruled in favour of the daughter, assuming that the sums in the joint account belonged half to the daughter and half to the mother, without examining the bank documents produced, which showed that the money had been paid in by the mother alone.

The Court of Cassation, however, ruled otherwise and referred the case to a new judge to decide on the basis of the evidence in the file.

The moral of the story: donations cannot be presumed, and joint accounts are not always “50-50”. And, as is often the case in inheritance cases, evidence counts more than affection.

Last update February 2026