I have some Coca-Cola shares on computershare that my grandpa gave me when I was a child in 1997. On the account, it has "my mothers name (CUST) my name". I assume when I was given them, since I was a child under my mothers custody, thats why it says that. I am now 35, however, and I am trying to figure out how to sell these? I can put my bank information on computershare site after login in, but if I go to the option of selling, it has my bank acount, but my mothers name, not mine. I alredy went to account settings and I have my name there, but that doesnt seem to fix that issue, and I dont know if it will casue a problem if I try to sell it like that. As a side question as someone that doesnt really know how stocks work, I have 20.40 shares (5 book, 5 Certificated, and 10.40 plan) but it says I only have 15 I can sell, why is that?
Question about shares on Computershare that were given when I was a child
byu/funkohunter717 inpersonalfinance
Posted by funkohunter717
9 Comments
You’ll need to transfer those shares out of the custodial account into your own name first. The “(CUST)” means it’s still technically a custodial account even though you’re way past 18. Call Computershare directly and tell them you want to transfer from custodial to individual ownership – they’ll walk you through the paperwork
For the shares thing, the certificated ones probably can’t be sold online, you’d need to physically mail in the certificates or have them converted to book entry first
Computershare has high fees so be careful with them.
I don’t understand why you don’t just call the business. The broker got paid for this, they know what their policies and procedures are better than random people who have never heard of this company. Like they probably have a call center full of people trained to answer your questions.
I just went through this exact thing with coke stock my parents bought me as a kid.
There’s likely a paper stock certificate for the 5 you can’t sell. If you can find that you can take it into a broker to exchange. I took mine to Fidelity along with my birth certificate and they added it to my account. If you can’t find the paper stock you’ll have to fill out some forms and pay some money to get it reissued.
For the digital shares I was able to sell them and transferred the money to my bank.
Computershare is the worst. At 34, I ended up having to go to my credit union to get a medallion stamp with my mom so we could both sign the certificated stock to convert to digital in my name, despite MD law clearly saying that UTMA account belonged only to me at 18.
I don’t have an answer for you, but I went through exactly this with Computershare, and it was a nightmare (I was the generation in the middle, the “custodian” who was neither the giver nor the ultimate recipient). I must have spent 100 hours before I got it straightened out.
I was told many contradictory things. One that I remember is that the shares could only be liquidated into an account that was set up exactly the same way (me as custodian for my daughter) but no such account existed, and then we were told we couldn’t open one, both because 1) she was no longer a minor and you can’t open a custodial account for a non-minor, and 2) she had a different name by then (was married) and we couldn’t open an account with a name that wasn’t her legal name but if it had her new legal name, it wouldn’t “exactly match” the Computershare account and we couldn’t use it.
Also by this time, we lived in two different states, neither of which were the state we lived in when the account was originally set up. We were told at one point that we would have to physically be together in a bank branch to both sign at the same time, but then after she traveled across three states, a different person in the same bank said, no, you don’t need to do that.
That’s just a couple examples of the ridiculousness. And yes, I know that at least some of what I was told was wrong, but that’s exactly my point. It was very difficult to get correct answers from Computershare. I resorted to just calling back over and over again asking the same questions of different reps and getting completely different answers until I finally got an answer I could use.
While not much help to OP (best of luck to you, prepare for a long slog and don’t give up; I *was* successful in the end), for anyone else reading this, *please* avoid custodial accounts for individual stocks if you want to give a gift to a minor. Just put the account in their name alone, or give a cash gift or use a 529, or something, *anything* else.
The 5 book shares are on a stock certificate somewhere. The 15.40 are electric shares.
The book shares and certificated shares are likely the same shares, unless a certificate was actually issued (usually framed) in which case you can’t sell those shares without turning in the certificate.
The 10.4 additional shares are all from dividend reinvestment.
For the shares with certificates, you will have to mail the certificates in. If you don’t have those, you can try to get duplicates. Might not be worth it.
The right way to sell the rest is to have them transferred to an individual account first.
IRL, we’re talking about ~$1k. I would just sell them from the custodial account, have the proceeds sent to your bank account, and see what happens. Prob goes smoothly.