Her debit card was declined at the pharmacy, or you called the bank and a very polite person told you he wasn’t able to discuss the account with you. The question underneath that is a practical one. Can you get to the money, and what do you have to do tomorrow morning?
There isn’t one answer. Whether the money is reachable this week or only after a court appoints somebody comes down to two facts: whose name was on the account, and whether a beneficiary was named on it. You can find out both today, off a statement or the signature card the bank has on file.
People hear bank accounts probate and picture a year in court. Plenty of accounts never reach probate at all. A joint account or an account with a payable-on-death beneficiary generally passes without any court involvement, and a sole-name account with a modest balance often moves on a sworn affidavit rather than a full administration.
I’ve practiced estate planning since 1994, working with families around Joplin, Springfield, and Bentonville. The table a few sections down will tell you which of those you’re dealing with. Start with the checklist first, though, because a few things are worth doing before you call anybody.
Find out how each account is titled. Pull a statement, or ask the bank to tell you the form of ownership even if it won’t tell you the balance. That single fact determines everything that follows.
Don’t start paying bills in whatever order they arrive. Once someone is appointed, the order of payment carries real consequences. Our executor checklist walks through the sequence.
Leave the automatic deposits and drafts alone for now. Expect a federal benefit deposit that arrived after the death to be pulled back out. There’s a section on that below.
Call the bank’s estate services department, not the branch. The person at the counter usually can’t do anything with a deceased customer’s account.
Keep receipts for anything you front personally. The funeral deposit especially. Reimbursement is normal, and it goes much more smoothly with paper.
The fastest route is usually the one that avoids court entirely. The next two sections tell you whether that’s available to you.
Why the Bank Froze the Account
Nobody at that bank is punishing your family. A sole-name account stops honoring withdrawals not because probate has started, but because the only person authorized to withdraw no longer exists and nobody else is authorized yet.
What the bank is actually looking for is legal cover. Missouri law tells a bank that payment to a joint owner or a survivor is a valid and sufficient release and discharge for the bank, whether the other named person is living or dead. Arkansas says the same thing in its own words: payment made in the manner the deposit statute provides is a complete and valid release and discharge of the bank.
So the bank is hunting for the piece of paper that makes paying you safe for the bank, and your whole job from here is getting that paper.
Two honest caveats. “Frozen” isn’t one thing, because it depends entirely on how the account was set up, which is the next section. And both statutes say the bank may pay, which means they permit a payment without requiring one. A bank’s documentation requirements are its internal policy rather than the law, which is why one branch can genuinely tell you something different from another branch of the same bank.
The Four Ways a Bank Account Can Be Titled
Find your account in this table and the rest of the article becomes a lookup rather than a read.
How the account was set up
Does it go through probate
Who can reach the money
What the bank typically wants
Sole name, no beneficiary
Yes, unless a small estate route applies
Nobody, until a court appoints someone or an affidavit is filed
Letters, a small estate affidavit, or a refusal-of-letters order, plus a certified death certificate
Joint with right of survivorship
No
The surviving joint owner
Certified death certificate and photo ID
Payable-on-death (POD)
No
The named beneficiary
Certified death certificate, photo ID, and a written request the institution may require under oath
Titled in a living trust
No
The successor trustee
Certified death certificate and proof of who the trust names as successor trustee
Two traps live underneath that table. The first is tenancy in common, which carries no survivorship at all, so the deceased person’s share falls to the estate. Arkansas requires an express designation to create it, and a multiple-party account with no express designation defaults to joint tenancy with right of survivorship, or to tenancy by the entirety where the holders have indicated they’re married to each other. The same Missouri joint deposit statute runs a similar presumption, treating a deposit in the names of a husband and wife as a tenancy by the entirety unless the paperwork says otherwise.
The second trap is worth reading twice. Arkansas recognizes no convenience account or agency account category. A parent who added an adult child to the account “just to help with the bills” has, by default, created a full survivorship account, and on the parent’s death that money belongs to the child rather than to the estate. That rule applies to accounts established, or amended to change the ownership designation, on or after June 1, 2015.
In plain terms, whatever anybody intended, the form on file at the bank is what governs. If your mother added you to her checking account so you could pay her utilities, you may have inherited that account outright, and your siblings may not agree that’s what she meant.
If You Are a Joint Owner or a Named Beneficiary
If your name is on the account as a joint owner, or you’re the named payable-on-death beneficiary, there’s generally nothing to file and no court to visit. The account generally belongs to you already. This is exactly what a payable-on-death designation is meant to do, and it’s the reason so many families never see a probate file.
Missouri permits a bank to pay a joint deposit to any one of the named owners or to the survivor. For a POD beneficiary, Missouri asks for a written request under oath, accompanied by proof of death and such other proof of entitlement as the institution requires. Arkansas handles both through its deposit account statute, which gives the bank its discharge once it pays in the manner the statute provides.
What to carry in: a certified death certificate, your photo ID, the account number, and enough patience to get past the branch to an estate services department. How quickly any particular bank moves is its own policy, so ask what it needs before you drive over.
There’s a hard edge to this. A POD designation controls over what the will says. I see the same pattern regularly, and what follows is a composite rather than any one family. An adult child settles the estate believing the will divides everything evenly, then learns at the counter that a beneficiary form signed years earlier gives one sibling the whole account. The will doesn’t reach it.
If the estate has real debts, hold on before you spend it. There’s a Missouri statute on that near the end of this article.
If the Account Is in One Name Only: The Small Estate Route
Most people assume the only option here is hiring a lawyer and opening a case that runs a year. Both states offer something much smaller, letting a person collect a modest estate on a sworn affidavit instead of a full administration. The thresholds and waiting periods differ enough that a family with accounts on both sides of the state line can face two entirely different procedures.
What it takes
Missouri
Arkansas
Value limit
$40,000 for the entire estate, less liens, debts, and encumbrances
$100,000 for all property owned at death, less encumbrances
What comes off the top
Entireties and joint tenancy property is excluded from the itemized value
Homestead and statutory allowances for a spouse or minor children are excluded
How long after death
30 days
45 days
Where you file
Probate division of the circuit court in the county of domicile
Probate clerk of the circuit court in the county of proper venue
Bond and filing cost
A bond is normally required unless the court finds one unnecessary; clerk’s fee set by statute
No bond named in the statute; $25 to file, plus $5 per certified copy
Notice to creditors
Once a week for two weeks, only if the affidavit lists more than $15,000
Only if the estate contains real property, within 30 days of filing
Those numbers come from Missouri’s small estate affidavit statute, which also requires that no application for letters be pending, and from the Arkansas statute letting a distributee collect without a personal representative.
Read those value limits carefully, because they measure the whole estate rather than the bank balance. A $30,000 account inside a $200,000 estate does not qualify in Missouri.
Arkansas adds something useful that goes unmentioned almost everywhere. The same statute expressly lets the distributee open a checking or savings account at an Arkansas bank in the name of the estate without filing a petition for probate.
Missouri has a second small-estate tool that people rarely hear about. Where the whole estate is no greater than the exempt property plus the surviving spouse’s or unmarried minor children’s allowance, the court can simply refuse to grant letters and let the spouse or children collect the personal property as if appointed. There’s no dollar cap on that prong, because it floats with the allowance. The separate $15,000 figure inside that statute belongs to the creditor prong, which applies only where there’s no surviving spouse and no unmarried minor children.
One caveat that matters. Legislatures set these dollar figures and legislatures change them, so confirm the current number with the probate clerk before you rely on it.
When There Is No Shortcut: Letters and an Estate Account
Above the threshold, somebody has to be appointed, and the appointment paper is exactly what the bank has been waiting for. If there’s a will naming an executor, the court issues letters testamentary. If there isn’t, it issues letters of administration. The document does the same work either way.
You file where she lived. Missouri opens the estate in the county of the decedent’s domicile, which is Jasper County for Joplin and Greene County for Springfield. Arkansas opens it in the county where the decedent resided at death, which is Benton County for Bentonville.
There’s an outside deadline, and the two states are far apart on it. Missouri requires that a will be presented and that an application for letters of administration be made within one year from the date of death, with limited exceptions. Arkansas gives five years from the death before a will may no longer be admitted or administration granted.
Then the account itself, in three steps. Get a tax ID number for the estate, using Form SS-4 or the free online application on IRS.gov. Open the estate checking account with the letters and that number. File Form 56 to notify the IRS of the fiduciary relationship so her tax notices come to you.
What the appointed representative is responsible for after that is its own subject. Our complete guide to probate covers the rest of the process.
You’ll read almost everywhere that POD and joint money is untouchable by creditors. In Missouri, that isn’t quite right.
Under the state’s nonprobate transfer law, each recipient of a recoverable transfer is liable to account for a pro rata share of what they received, to the extent it’s needed to cover the surviving spouse’s and dependent children’s statutory allowances and claims left unpaid after the probate estate has been exhausted. It reaches joint-tenancy-with-survivorship property and trust property, but only up to the amount the deceased person contributed.
It also has its own clock. The accounting action has to be commenced within eighteen months after the death, and a qualified claimant can’t sue at all unless the personal representative first received a written demand within sixteen months. Someone owed funeral expenses counts as a creditor for this purpose.
Arkansas looks different, and I want to phrase this precisely. No Arkansas statute was found that does the same thing for bank deposit accounts. The nearest provision is a savings clause inside the transfer-on-death law for registered securities, which preserves creditors’ rights under other laws as to securities rather than creating a recovery right against deposits. That’s a research finding, not an assurance that a survivor can never be pursued.
So the practical advice runs opposite to most of what you’ll read online. If you received POD or joint money in Missouri and the estate has real debts, don’t treat it as spent until the picture is clear.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I use my mom’s debit card to pay for her funeral?
No, and the workaround most families use is reimbursement. Somebody pays the deposit personally, keeps the invoice and the receipt together, and is paid back from the estate. That position carries a small legal advantage in Missouri, because a person who paid funeral expenses is treated as a creditor who may apply for refusal of letters and is subrogated to that creditor’s rights. Ask the funeral home about a payment plan while the paperwork moves.
How do I find bank accounts I don’t know about?
Start with her last income tax return and look at the interest entries, since each one points to an institution. Then watch the incoming mail for a full statement cycle. After that, search the state unclaimed property programs, which cost nothing to use. The Missouri State Treasurer holds abandoned accounts and safe deposit box contents, and the Arkansas Auditor of State runs the program there.
My parent lived in Missouri but banked in Arkansas. Which rules apply?
Both, in different places. The estate opens where she lived, so a Missouri resident’s probate happens in a Missouri circuit court. The bank holding the deposit applies its own state’s deposit rules and its own paperwork, which can mean a Missouri affidavit meets an Arkansas institution’s requirements imperfectly. Between our Joplin and Bentonville offices I see this often, and it’s the situation most worth an hour with an attorney before you file anything.
About the author. Christopher W. Dumm earned his J.D. from Regent University and holds a B.S. in Business Administration from the University of Missouri-Columbia. He has practiced estate planning since 1994, founded his firm in 1997, and teaches estate planning as an adjunct professor. He is licensed in Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas, Texas, and Virginia, and the firm serves families from offices in Joplin and Springfield, Missouri, and Bentonville, Arkansas. If you’d like to walk through which of these routes fits your situation, our office is glad to talk it over.
The client stories in this article are illustrative composites based on common situations. They do not describe specific clients or promise any particular result, and past results do not guarantee future outcomes. This article is attorney advertising and shares general information only, not legal advice. Reading it or contacting our office does not create an attorney-client relationship. Statutory dollar limits and waiting periods are set by the legislature and can change, so confirm current figures before you rely on them. Every situation is different, so talk with a licensed attorney about yours.
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