Payments: how money really moves

Every line on a bank statement says whose side the money is on, and German says it with a preposition that still has a noun inside it. Zugunsten is zu Gunsten run together, literally “to the favour of”, and like most prepositions built from an old noun it takes the genitive: eine Überweisung zugunsten des Vermieters, a transfer in the landlord’s favour. That works for any noun. It stops working when the beneficiary is a pronoun. Then the phrase opens up again and a possessive moves into the gap: zu Ihren Gunsten, in your favour, zu seinen Gunsten, in his. A letter from the bank announcing eine Gutschrift zu Ihren Gunsten is written exactly as it should be. The mirror image behaves the same way: zulasten des Kontos, charged to the account, but zu Ihren Lasten, at your expense.