Joint accounts are accounts, usually with a financial institution, where more than one person has rights to the account.  Deciding what those rights are is a problem often faced in contested probate cases. Are they survivorship accounts where the survivor gets all of the account and the money does not got through a will or probate? Are they non-survivorship accounts where the money does not go to the survivor but passes through the will and through probate?

Accounts with community property owned by both spouses are treated differently than accounts between non-spouses (See below.)

The courts look at the documents creating the account and the words used to determine the type of account involved.  Often, the financial institution will use a pre-printed form that has boxes to check.  The card will be filled out correctly but no box will be checked!  Or two conflicting boxes will be checked!  Since all accounts are presumed to be non-survivorship accounts, the burden of proof is on the person claiming that the account is a survivorship account to prove that it is.  If the boxes on the signature card are not checked, too many boxes are checked or as one jury found, checked later by someone not the owner of the account, then the account is not a survivor account.  The account would pass through the owner's will or through his estate. However, the courts are more likely to find that two spouses intended to create joint accounts with right of survivorship than the are likely to find that two non-spouses intended to create such accounts. In other words, the burden of proof on non-spousal accounts is higher than it is on spousal accounts.

Joint accounts can cause difficulties.  The difficulties related to the type of joint account in question.  There are three basic joint accounts:

1. convenience accounts - where one or more persons own the account but other, non-owners, are allowed to make withdrawals  On the death of the owner, the account passes through his will or through his probate estate and does not pass to the non-owner;
2. tenants in common - where two are more persons own the account equally - when one owner dies, his share passes through his will or through his probate estate and does not pass to the other owner; and
3. joint accounts - with or without the right of survivorship.

• with right of survivorship means that when one of the joint owners dies, the account belongs to the survivor and does not pass through the deceased's will or through his probate estate.
• without right of survivorship means that the account is owned by the joint owners and when one dies, his share passes through his will or through his probate estate and does not pass to the other owner.

An example of the difficulty with joint accounts are the following cases:

1. One case held that there was no right of survivorship even though the signature card said " Joint accounts - with survivorship" since the language did not match that required by statute to create a survivorship account;
2. Another case held that there was no right of survivorship because no box had been checked;
3. Signature card said "Type of customer - joint with survivorship" held not a survivorship account; and,
4. "Joint account - payable to either or survivor" was not a survivorship account.
   

On June 25, 2009 in Holmes v. Beatty, No. 07-0784, the Texas Supreme Court reversed some of the holdings listed above as they relate to community property between spouses. The Court held it was easier for spouses to create joint accounts with right of survivorship if they used terms like JT TEN, or designated the account as a joint account. The Court said that the difference between a joint account and other accounts is the right of survivorship. Since the husband and wife signed documents that indicated the account was a joint account, it had a right of survivorship. The account went to the survivor rather than through the wills of the husband and wife.

As shown by the cases cited above, accounts with a substantial amount of money in them need to be scrutinized carefully to determine what type of account they are and who, therefore, owns the account.

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