Funds for missionary whos family is no longer ward

luvmy8dz wrote:We have a missionary who was a member of our ward when he left but his family has since moved. Funds for this Elder continue to be drawn from our ward's missionary budget. All funds donated by his family have been used and it now shows a negative balance. How do I get them to stop drawing from our ward budget and get it from his family's current ward?

Your bishop needs to talk to the bishop of the new ward so that they can agree on the transition date. It sounds like that would be a few months ago. Once they are in agreement, a clerk from the new ward should call Clerk Support who can direct him to the right place to make the change in responsibility. The change will be made retroactive to the effective date of the transition, and then your ward will get a credit to your missionary fund for the appropriate number of payments.

Alan_Brown wrote:Once they are in agreement, a clerk from the new ward should call Clerk Support who can direct him to the right place to make the change in responsibility.

I'm sure to some degree it depends on who you talk with at clerk support, but my experience has been that the bishop also has to be the one to call in the change.

crislapi wrote:I'm sure to some degree it depends on who you talk with at clerk support, but my experience has been that the bishop also has to be the one to call in the change.

I've done this twice as a ward finance clerk and had no problems calling in the agreed change of responsibility to CHQ. The first time I also thought about how easy it was, but then I realized if down the road the other Bishop objected to the change, the whole thing could be simply reversed by CHQ and we would start all over. Fortunately, I've never seen this happen.

I won't disagree though that it MAY depend on who you get on the phone when you call it in. I've experienced this with other issues.

It is good to hear that my ward was not the only one that had this problem. I didn't have any problems as a financial clerk at the time having HQ transferring the money. I was asked if we had spoken to the other Bishop, which we had of course. Taking care of this got me in the position that I'm in (Ward Clerk), though;). When you take a ward for several thousand dollars in the negative in the Missionary Funds to a positive, it tends to get the attention of the Bishop (so be careful how well you do your calling;)).

Thanks for all the answers but I have come up with a follow up. The original amount donated by this missionary's family is not evenly divisible by the $400 being taken out. So when I get the Bishops communicating with eachother and the funds are refunded to our Ward Missionary budget, there will either be an excess or deficit of $200. Would I cut a check to the new Ward to give them the excess?
An added twist to all this is that I just found out that the missionary's father has been made Bishop of their new ward. That ought to make the transition a bit smoother!!

luvmy8dz wrote:Thanks for all the answers but I have come up with a follow up. The original amount donated by this missionary's family is not evenly divisible by the $400 being taken out. So when I get the Bishops communicating with eachother and the funds are refunded to our Ward Missionary budget, there will either be an excess or deficit of $200. Would I cut a check to the new Ward to give them the excess?

As far as the Church is concerned, they will just take out a multiple of $400, as you clearly understand. When I've been involved in such issues, the wards have never worried about fractional payments -- the remainder just was moved to the Ward Missionary fund from the missionary's subcategory.

But if that $200 is important, and the bishops work out an arrangement for including it in the transition, then yes, you can write a check from your ward's Missionary fund made out to the other ward, which can then deposit it in the appropriate subcategory of their Ward Missionary fund.