Bank accounts and the public record

Listen instead

The same material, read aloud and told more loosely than it is written. Nothing is said in it that this page does not also say.

What the law protects

Start with what the law protects, because that is what keeps an account out of an outsider's reach.

Congress has said that every financial institution has an affirmative and continuing obligation to respect its customers' privacy and to protect the confidentiality of their nonpublic personal information. 15 U.S.C. 6801¹ states it as the policy. And except as the subchapter otherwise provides, a bank may not hand that information to an outsider unless it provides or has provided the customer the privacy notice the statute requires, under 15 U.S.C. 6802².

Florida closes the door from the other side. Bank account numbers and debit, charge and credit card numbers held by a state agency are exempt from public inspection under Fla. Stat. 119.071(5)(b)³, and the exemption does not end when the number reaches a court file. Court records in Florida are open, but Fla. Stat. 119.0714(1)⁴ lists account numbers among the records that stay closed inside an open file.

Even a secured lender's grip on an account stays off the public filing system. Except as provided for proceeds, a security interest in a Florida deposit account is perfected only by control of the account, not by filing a financing statement, under Fla. Stat. 679.3121⁵. So the UCC index, the one place a reader might expect an account to surface, does not carry it. This page does not cover whether any such list of accounts exists. It says what the law protects and how account information can lawfully be obtained.

Why pretexting is a crime

The shortcut most people imagine, calling the bank with a story, is the thing the statute names and punishes.

Federal law makes it a violation to obtain, or try to obtain, a bank's customer information about another person by a false statement to the bank's staff or to a customer, or by handing the staff a forged, counterfeit, lost, stolen or fraudulently obtained document, or one containing a false statement. 15 U.S.C. 6821⁶ draws the line. Customer information is anything the bank holds about a customer from that relationship, and a financial institution is any business keeping deposit, credit, trust or other accounts for customers, under 15 U.S.C. 6827⁷.

Hiring the problem out does not solve it. Asking someone to get the information, knowing they will get it by those means, is itself a violation under 15 U.S.C. 6821(b). Punishment for a knowing and intentional violation is a fine, up to 5 years in prison, or both, under 15 U.S.C. 6823⁸. Done alongside another federal crime, or as part of a pattern of illegal activity involving more than $100,000 in 12 months, it carries twice the amount provided in subsection (b)(3) or (c)(3) of section 3571 of title 18 and up to 10 years. And a debt collector who uses a false representation or deceptive means to obtain information about a consumer also breaks 15 U.S.C. 1692e(10)⁹.

The statute has exceptions, and it pays to read which ones. One covers a law enforcement agency performing its official duties, under 15 U.S.C. 6821(c). Another covers a state-licensed private investigator collecting child support from a person a court has adjudged delinquent, where a court order authorizes it, under 15 U.S.C. 6821(g). Among the exceptions shown, that is the one tied to collecting a judgment, and it is child support alone. A state may give more protection than the federal floor, where the Federal Trade Commission determines its protection is greater, under 15 U.S.C. 6824¹⁰.

The lawful routes after judgment

The lawful door to an account is the court's process, not a search, and 15 U.S.C. 6802(e) is where the privacy statute says so: a bank may disclose to comply with a subpoena or summons, or to respond to judicial process.

In New York, until the judgment is satisfied or vacated, a judgment creditor may compel disclosure of everything relevant to satisfying it by subpoena to any person, under CPLR 5223¹¹. CPLR 5224¹² gives three forms: a subpoena to attend a deposition on oral or written questions, a subpoena to produce books and papers, and an information subpoena with written questions answered under oath. For a private judgment creditor, other than the state, a municipality or their agencies or officers, an information subpoena to a bank needs the creditor's or attorney's signed certification of a reasonable belief that the recipient holds information that will help collect. Without the certification the subpoena is null and void, under CPLR 5224(a)(3).

Finding the bank is only the first move. Issued by the clerk or the creditor's attorney under CPLR 5222(a)¹³, a restraining notice freezes property the debtor has an interest in, including money in a bank, for up to a year under CPLR 5222(b). Some money is left free. Where payments reasonably identifiable as statutorily exempt payments were directly deposited in the 45 days before the restraining notice was served on the bank, $2,500 cannot be restrained under CPLR 5222(h), a figure CPLR 5205(l)(3)¹⁴ adjusts every three years. And a restraining notice does not reach a floor of 240 times the higher of the federal or New York minimum hourly wage, except any part a court finds unnecessary for the debtor and dependents, under CPLR 5222(i). Then the levy: a bank served with an execution must transfer the covered funds to the sheriff under CPLR 5232(a)¹⁵, but for a natural person's account not before twenty-seven days under CPLR 5232(g).

Florida runs a different sequence. At the creditor's request the court must order the debtor to complete the fact information sheet within 45 days, under Fla. R. Civ. P. 1.560¹⁶. That sheet asks where the debtor keeps checking and savings accounts and for the account numbers, and it asks the debtor to attach the last 3 statements for each bank, savings, credit union or other financial account. Ignoring the order may be treated as contempt. Florida also gives a judgment creditor a right to a writ of garnishment, under Fla. Stat. 77.01¹⁷, obtained after judgment by a motion stating the amount of the judgment under Fla. Stat. 77.03¹⁸. Service makes the bank liable for what it holds and creates a lien on it under Fla. Stat. 77.06(1)¹⁹, and the bank must answer within 20 days under Fla. Stat. 77.04²⁰.

One Florida rule can stop the garnishment cold. The Florida Supreme Court held in Beal Bank v. Almand that, as against a third-party creditor, an account in both spouses' names is presumed held by the entireties when the signature card does not disclaim it and the account carries the required unities. And only creditors of both spouses jointly may reach entireties property. So the order of operations is plain: find the bank, freeze the account, then take the money, if the account turns out to be reachable at all.

What the record can hint at

None of these four records shows an account, but each points at a bank in the debtor's life.

The first is a lender. A financing statement is sufficient only if it names the debtor, names the secured party and indicates the collateral, under Fla. Stat. 679.5021²¹ and UCC 9-502²², so a filing against the debtor can name a lending bank. What a UCC filing attaches to walks the rest of that record. The second is a mortgagee. In Florida a mortgage is not good against creditors or later purchasers without notice unless it is recorded, under Fla. Stat. 695.01(1)²³, and the county recorder's public index carries the party names on every recorded document, under Fla. Stat. 28.2221²⁴.

The third is a tax escrow. Under Fla. Stat. 197.344(1)(b)²⁵ a mortgagee holding the escrow may ask that the tax notice go to it, and the owner then gets a duplicate saying so. The fourth is a litigant. Florida's policy is that county records are open to any person, under Fla. Stat. 119.01²⁶ and Fla. Stat. 119.07²⁷, and a record in a court file stays open unless closed or excepted under Fla. Stat. 119.0714(1). A bank that sued the debtor, or that the debtor sued, sits in that file as a party.

Read all four together and the limit is the point. Each shows a relationship with a bank, a lender, a servicer or a litigant. None shows an account, its number or its balance. Those four names are where a court's process starts, and what the debtor must answer under oath is where it ends. Whether to pursue any of it is a question for counsel with the file open, not for a page.