A grieving widow is taking on the Australian banking industry after being lumped with thousands of dollars of fees and interest from her late husband’s estate.
“Grieving families have enough to deal with without greedy banks exploiting them when they are at their most vulnerable,” Kate Vaughan said last week.
Kate’s husband, Australian skydiver Michael Vaughan died in March 2015 after suffering a mid-air collision.
He was just 45 years old at the time.

Following Michael's death, Kate contacted the major bank - which she refused to name - and chased the status of her husband's finances. She informed them that she was in the process of being granted a probate, which would allow her to take control of the accounts.
“I rang them and said, ‘I know our finances, I know there are loans sitting there going to accrue interest. Please can you give me some statements, tell me where they’re at, what can I do to pay anything off?” she told news.com.au over the weekend.
The bank, however, refused to provide Kate with details until the probate was finalised. But even then, things continued to be fraught with problems.
“Then when I did get probate and asked for a statement there was an enormous amount of money that had been racked up,” Kate said.

Top Comments
Unless her husband was withholding information, she would have had a good idea of the mortgage outstanding, and any debts. It would have been very easy to work out approximately how much money would be owing, and put that aside each week. Or, expect it to come out of the estate. Of course a bank can't do anything until probate comes through - what if she wasn't in fact the beneficiary of the estate?
I've been a probate secretary in NSW for almost 20 years and I've never encountered a bank who wouldn't speak with myself or my employer in regard to an estate.