A private legal practitioner, Albert Gyamfi, has said it is a criminal offence for family members to withdraw money from the bank account of a deceased person to organise their funeral.

According to him, the bank account of a deceased person is immediately closed by law when the person is declared dead; therefore, interfering with the property of the deceased is an act that is punishable by law.

He said the family should find a means of organising the funeral of the deceased person rather than withdrawing from his account, which is common in the Ghanaian sociocultural context.

“Let me sound this warning; the general practice has been that when a person dies, people would want to go into his bank account for money for the organisation of the funeral. That is intermeddling. Wherever the family finds a room to organise the funeral, they should do so. And when probate has been granted, then if there’s any property to liquidate that debt, they use his property to do so.

“But you cannot go into his bank account, withdraw money for the purpose of a funeral. As soon as the person dies, doctors declare him dead, his bank account is closed until probate has been granted,” Mr. Gyamfi cautioned while contributing to a discussion on The Law on Sunday.

He, however, added that if an individual gathers the properties of a deceased person to safely keep the assets but does not deprive the entitled persons of the use of the property, such an act was not categorised as intermeddling with the properties of the dead person.

“If you look at Section 17, the law principally says, unlawfully deprive the entitled persons of the use. So, the law has a mens rea of your unlawfully depriving persons of the use. So, if I am only gathering them for safekeeping, I am not depriving people of the use,” Mr Gyamfi emphasised.

YNA/BOG