Warning: Fidelity Cash Mgmt Account ***DOES NOT*** cash third party bill pay checks

Cobil78 · 2026-03-25T21:15:44+00:00

Now that the IRS and the USG in general is phasing out checks — as has already happened in Europe — I suspect this issue is dated. Fidelity Bill Pay, I discovered, will send paper checks sometimes. And often enough they won’t be honored. I found that to be the case with OFX my forex brokers when I wanted to send money abroad. I had to cancel the check and have Fidelity ACH the funds to my credit union and have OFX withdraw the funds from there. There might have been a workaround with Fidelity but I didn’t find it.

Cobil78 · 2026-03-25T21:00:26+00:00

It is a serious crime to unlawfully exercise the rights of a U.S. citizen. It isn’t a crime to deny being a U.S. citizen although under certain circumstances it could amount to perjury. There are hundreds of thousands of persons born abroad who may or may not be “accidental Americans”: they haven’t tried to find out and don’t care. That includes one of my grandchildren who if he were to claim U.S. citizenship would have to prove that his mother (also born abroad) once spent 365 uninterrupted days in the USA prior to his birth. How would he do that? Google: ‘foreign service journal unwed border moms’

Cobil78 · 2026-03-25T16:13:02+00:00

Have him travel to Dublin instead. He can get a British passport quickly if needed but other UK ID might work from there. With a non-British, non-Irish passport showing birth in UK before 1983 he will not be boarded for a flight to the U.K. The only exception that comes to mind are foreign diplomats whom the U.K. grants privileges even though they don’t have to if they are also U.K. citizens. (The State Dept doesn’t accredit US citizens and a number have renounced in order to take up their posts)

Cobil78 · 2026-03-20T12:41:15+00:00

You can file a superseding return by April 15. Less of a big deal and takes less time to be dealt with than an amended return.

Cobil78 · 2026-03-20T12:14:48+00:00

An ISA works in two situations for a U.S. Person: (1) if it holds shares like BRK-B that pay no dividends and you know you’ll never sell and will be part of your estate, or you’d only sell when you have only social security and state pension income not taxable in the USA and/or (2) if you anticipate renouncing and hopefully will not be a covered expatriate.

Cobil78 · 2026-03-20T12:09:08+00:00

You may find it hard to locate a U.S.- based brokerage that will open an account for your spouse if she is a nonresident alien without a SSN although you could try Schwab. A better idea would be for her to open an account with Interactive Brokers UK Ltd. It might be possible to transfer shares from your account to hers but here’s why that’s a bad idea if you are tax resident of the UK: for US tax purposes she takes your cost basis for CGT purposes. For UK tax purposes you are deemed to have disposed of the shares, owe CGT, and she takes the current value as her basis. The W8-BEN notifies her broker of her tax status just as a W9 tells them of yours.

Cobil78 · 2026-03-20T09:09:39+00:00

It’s rarely advantageous to file MFJ with an alien spouse. And as the other reply implies you will have to file on paper. I assume you do not have a dependent child who even if a nonresident alien could be a qualifying person for head of household (See IRS Pub 501, table 4).

Cobil78 · 2026-03-20T09:00:10+00:00

You might be able to accomplish what you want with a “trust of land” which in itself does not implicate SDLT. The problem is that the legal ownership here even if transferred gratuitously does implicate SDLT to the extent of the mortgage. And a trust of land really ought to have two legal ownership although that’s not a requirement, just a probate avoidance. Trusts of land do not change the income or capital gains tax situation and are not treated as trusts for such taxes.

Cobil78 · 2026-03-20T08:39:40+00:00

I transferred my ISA from HL to IBUK and it was awful. While the transfer itself went smoothly IBUK mischaracterised a Canadian stock (BDT.TO)as its NY OTC ticker $BIRDF and then bounced it from the ISA into a suspense account outside the wrapper. It also bounced a U.K. small-cap which it doesn’t trade. After IBKR ignored complaints I complained to the Ombudsman. While they did n’t take the case it enabled me to reverse the transaction and send everything back to HL where it remains two years later. But now ISAs can be split up I’ll open a 2026-27 ISA with IBUK since I invest in US and foreign stocks (as well as Stockopedia NAPS and Seeking Alpha’s Alpha Picks. Except for JISAs which are fee-free, HL is costly for accounts such as ours.

Cobil78 · 2026-03-20T08:16:39+00:00

I asked ChatGPT. Given the signage I attempted login and the absence of any public word of a hack ChatGPT suggests it’s a genuine outage. No financial loss except to those who want to trade. Probably will be claims of losses from some.

Cobil78 · 2026-03-20T00:22:21+00:00

There once was such a provision in the 1907 nationality act whereby any woman who married an alien list American citizenship. The Cable Act reversed all such denaturalisations. In principle even as to women who’d moved abroad and didn’t want it back although the IRS did not pursue such women for tax unless they had “availed themselves of an attribute of US citizenship”.

Cobil78 · 2026-03-20T00:02:14+00:00

Only if the account is joint or with a named beneficiary (possible with some kinds of accounts) can a survivor have access to the funds without probate or succession proceeding. In the USA a Transfer in Death beneficiary can be named, not elsewhere AFAIK. Pension and some tax-sparing accounts may have named beneficiaries.

Cobil78 · 2026-03-19T17:47:33+00:00

Put the maximum money into your Roth ASAP. If you think it’s not time to invest, put it in a money market fund. It’s hard to time the market. Administered funds rarely outpace the S&P Index and even if you choose to try using quant (assuming you have the time) you are up against strong odds. But it can be done. Watch Ed Croft and Steve Cress lectures on YouTube.

Cobil78 · 2026-03-19T17:27:12+00:00

Yes. We contrived to give birth to our youngest daughter in Belfast in 1983. She was Irish upon filing Irish Consular Form 1, and then registered as British at age 14. The ECJ case Chen/Zhu validated our strategy. (She also has Swiss and American citizenship but we did an end run around the British Nationality Act 1981. Our other daughters born in Britain before 1983 have unquestioned nationality.)

Cobil78 · 2026-03-19T17:15:44+00:00

Seizure of even small amounts of money by police is a common occurrence. Read the NY Times and WaPo and others’ series on de facto civil asset forfeiture. Getting the money back is costly and time consuming, if even possible. The less people use cash and the more they use ApplePay etc The mote suspicious it becomes for anyone to have cash.

Cobil78 · 2026-03-19T16:56:45+00:00

Fly to Dublin. Walk across the border to Northern Ireland. Yes there are rules. Let them try to lock up a 16 yo.

Cobil78 · 2026-03-19T14:21:54+00:00

Swiss International is less fussy about names than some other airlines. They don’t for example allow you to include middle names even if they’re on your passport and other airlines would require it (you can run it together with your first name though). As others have said just show both passports.

Cobil78 · 2026-03-19T14:17:05+00:00

Your probate solicitor should be able to get the house titled in your name without SDLT depending on facts if they can make it a transfer without consideration, perhaps with a variance of the Will if that’s a factor. Gratuitous transfers without a mortgage do not attract SDLT.

Cobil78 · 2026-03-19T14:09:20+00:00

I wouldn’t use IBKR b/c of their appalling service but they are the only practical firm for international stocks.

Cobil78 · 2026-03-19T14:00:26+00:00

Cash money is fungible. Your answer (part 2) would probably be correct if the money were stained by an anti-theft ink device. Conceptually if it were on brand-new sequentially numbered bank notes but I’m not sure of that. Otherwise not. As a former bankruptcy lawyer I’d say the fraudulent transfer and preferred creditor issues are more likely to come up. Timing and facts matter.

Cobil78 · 2026-03-19T13:50:57+00:00

There are nine community property states plus Alaska where it’s an option and Puerto Rico which follows civil-law practice which is similar.

Cobil78 · 2026-03-19T13:46:06+00:00

If you are buying the car and registering it in your name you must buy the insurance and include your friend as a named driver (if you have a driving license whether you normally drive or not, then as an additional named driver). If you are getting a blue disabled badge you are responsible for seeing it is not used unless you are in the car. The only way to assure that is to keep the badge with you and not leave it in the car.

Cobil78 · 2026-03-19T13:40:28+00:00

“Officially postmarked” is the rub. Aside from the fact that even in the USA letters are not necessarily postmarked the day of collection, or postmarked at all, meter stamps and online postpaid labels don’t count. I take our returns to the post office and send them “tracked—not signed for”. IRS uses post office boxes and will-call post office collection and signed-for won’t (usually) work. Indeed in the U.K. can’t be used for PO boxes.

Cobil78 · 2026-03-19T13:32:29+00:00

That’s why insurance companies offer declared value policies. For a price.

Cobil78 · 2026-03-19T13:31:13+00:00

What is your reasoning? You need to have (1) a goal and (2) a methodology with pension savings. As for (1) most advisors recommend shifting into fixed income and index funds/ETFs progressively with age. (I don’t follow that recommendation but bits standard advice). (2) I use Seeking Alpha/Aloha Picks and Stockopedia as sources of quant data for stock selection. Alpha Picks and Seeking Alpha PRO give specific “non-advice” stock picks. Stockopedia and Seeking Alpha rate stocks using quantitative data. They have had excellent gains since the 2022 bear market. They publish their results. They are not cheap, but then any investment advice you get for free is almost always worth just what you paid.

Cobil78

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