Accounting for the dead

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — An appeals court in Missouri reversed the lower court’s ruling in favor of a retirement system that sued its bank for not returning $481,000 paid into the account of a dead employee whose family never notified the retirement system of her 1969 death. The bank only returned the funds in the account at the time of the request, $14,000; there is no law requiring banks to verify their customers are alive.