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Centier Bank

Subsidiary of First Bancshares, Inc.

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Estate planning options at Centier Bank

There are two ways to keep your Centier Bank accounts out of probate: adding beneficiary designations and retitling eligible accounts into a revocable living trust. Which approach works best depends on the account type and your overall estate plan.

Centier Bank has 19 accounts with different estate transfer rules. Here is how beneficiary designations, trust ownership, and probate apply to each one.

No beneficiary form at Centier Bank

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1
The beneficiaries of a pay-on-death account are the ones on the bank's account records, and Centier pays them under the latest designation it holds. Every owner who created the account signs to change a beneficiary or the account type.

What Centier Bank says about beneficiaries and trusts

Each section is Centier Bank's own statement, with the document it comes from numbered under Sources.

Which accounts take a beneficiary1

Payable-on-death account

A beneficiary of a pay-on-death (transfer-on-death) account can take nothing until every owner who created it has died, and only if the beneficiary is alive at that point.1

What a designation takes to be effective

Payable-on-death account

Centier needs the signature of every owner who created a pay-on-death account before it changes a beneficiary or the account type.1

What Centier Bank's agreement says about beneficiaries3

Changing or revoking a designation

While they live, the owners who set up a pay-on-death account can name different beneficiaries, switch the account to another type, or take out some or all of the money.1

Joint accounts

When two or more people open a pay-on-death account together, they hold it as joint owners with survivorship, and the named beneficiaries take only after the last of them dies.1

The institution's right to refuse a designation or an account title

Centier may decline some kinds of account ownership or beneficiary designation, and it takes no position on what a designation achieves except who it pays.1

Which accounts a trust can hold1

Trust account

Under Centier's agreement, a person named as trustee in a written trust agreement may open and maintain an account in that capacity.1

What Centier Bank says about trust accounts1

Review of the trust document

Opening a trust's account does not make Centier a trustee. The bank does not police the trust's terms and is not responsible if a trustee misuses the money.1

Accounts handled elsewhere1

Centier Financial Partners

Trusts for which Centier serves as corporate trustee or as agent for a trustee, and estate planning help2

Not in Centier Bank's published guidance8

  • What the owner provides to name a beneficiary
  • A beneficiary designation form
  • An online way to name a beneficiary
  • Who may be named as beneficiary
  • How shares are split among beneficiaries
  • Which trust documents it accepts
  • A trust account form
  • How long a change takes

Sources2

Sources

(3)·

Data sourced from Centier Bank primary sources (32 pages reviewed). How we research.

Download these Centier Bank instructions

A printable PDF with the steps, required documents, and contact details, verified against Centier Bank primary sources. Bring it to the branch or keep it beside the phone.

Download instructions for the whole estate

Centier Bank estate support

Centier Financial Partners

Verified Oct 2026

Estate planning articles

Learn how to protect your Centier Bank accounts and other assets with trusts, beneficiary designations, and estate planning documents.

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