The Provincial Court of Ávila has confirmed the sentence of a woman who withdrew 20,261.17 euros from a bank account shared with her deceased brother and will have to return that money to the inheritance. The court understands that the fact of appearing as co-owner of the account does not in itself prove that the money was yours, since the important thing is to prove where the funds really came from.
As explained in the ruling SAP AV 345/2025, Ernesto died in March 2020, single and without children, and had left a will in favor of three nephews, Eugenia, Victoriano and Elisa, named heirs in equal parts. Months after the death, his sister Apolonia ordered a transfer of 20,261.17 euros from a Bankia account, today Caixabank, in which both appeared as indistinct joint owners. Elisa went to court to demand that this amount return to the estate.
In the first instance, the Court of First Instance number 1 of Arévalo ruled in favor of Elisa and declared, on the one hand, that she had the status of testamentary heir and, on the other, that Apolonia must return the sum withdrawn to the inheritance, in addition to the interest generated since the first extrajudicial claim. Faced with that resolution, the defendant appealed, alleging that Elisa could not sue alone, that there were her own acts that demonstrated that only half of the balance belonged to the deceased and that, since it was a shared account, joint ownership of the money should be presumed.
Despite the allegations, the Court rejects all the reasons for the appeal. Regarding Elisa’s legitimation, the court makes it clear that judicially claiming an amount to return to the inheritance benefits the entire hereditary community, even if the other co-heirs were opposed to suing their own mother. In fact, the Court considers that preventing this claim when it comes to recovering money for the inheritance would mean protecting an action contrary to the common interest.
Being joint owner of an account is not enough to keep the money
The Provincial Court explains the doctrine of the Supreme Court on indistinct accounts. The resolution insists that appearing as a joint owner only grants powers to dispose of the balance against the bank, but that does not automatically mean that the money belongs half to the two owners. In fact, the ruling itself literally states that this bank ownership “does not by itself determine the existence of a condominium.”
For the court, the key is in the origin of the money. And in this case it is considered proven that the account was fed mainly by Ernesto’s Social Security pension, in addition to pharmacy reimbursements and other income linked to him. It also indicates that the expenses charged to that account corresponded to the deceased’s own payments. On the other hand, it was not proven that Apolonia had deposited even the slightest sum of money into that account from her work or her assets.
The defendant also tried to rely on the Inheritance Tax self-assessments, in which only half of the account balance had been included as part of the inheritance. But the Court rules out that this could close the debate. According to the Chamber, these tax declarations cannot be considered a definitive act on the ownership of the money, since they were prepared by a third party and do not constitute a clear and unequivocal statement intended to establish in an unalterable way who owned the funds.
Furthermore, the ruling explains that, after assessing the movements of the account and the absence of evidence on the part of the defendant, the Court points out that “the joint ownership of such securities, funds, accounts and insurance settlements responds only to the fact of placing two people as owners of such assets in order to be able to dispose of them” in case of need of the true owner, who for the court was Ernesto.
For all these reasons, the Provincial Court rejects the appeal in its entirety and confirms the sentence handed down in the first instance. This means that Apolonia will have to return the 20,261.17 euros to the estate, pay the interest from the first extrajudicial claim and also assume the costs of the appeal.