What to do when a PlainsCapital account holder dies

Ten days. The PlainsCapital Bank Consumer Deposit Account Agreement says the bank's authority to accept, pay, collect, or close an account is not revoked by death until it has actual knowledge of the death and a reasonable opportunity to act on it -- and that even with that knowledge, it may for ten (10) days after the date of death pay or certify checks drawn on or before that date, unless a person claiming an interest in the account orders a stop payment. Practical consequence for an executor: report the death promptly, and if checks written before death should not clear, place a stop payment rather than assuming the death itself stops them. Separately, the agreement lets the bank reverse deposits payable to the deceased, so Social Security or pension payments that post after the date of death will typically be clawed back.

Yes, in the ordinary case. The Consumer Deposit Account Agreement lists "the re-titling of a Time Deposit account due to transfer of ownership into a living trust held within the Bank" among the exceptions to the early withdrawal penalty, alongside the death or judicial determination of incompetence of a time deposit owner. So a CD can generally be retitled into your living trust mid-term without breaking the term. Ask the banker to process it as a retitling under that exception rather than closing the CD and opening a new one, which would reset the term and the rate. The same exception list also means an inherited IRA CD can typically be paid to the beneficiary or the estate at death without the term penalty.

The account paperwork. The Consumer Deposit Account Agreement states, in capital letters, that the type of account you select may determine how your property passes at your death and that YOUR WILL MAY NOT CONTROL the disposition of funds in some of these accounts. Ownership is set by the Signature Card you sign: single-party with a P.O.D. payee, multiple-party with or without right of survivorship, a Texas community property account (married couples only, and only if noted on the card), or an informal Trust Account. Two traps that cost Texas families money: a convenience signer is not an heir -- the agreement says the convenience signer owns the account at your death only if they are also named a P.O.D. payee or Trust Account beneficiary; and a stale P.O.D. payee still takes ahead of a newer will or trust. Ask a banker to read you the current Signature Card title on each account, then fix it there.

Only in a narrow lane, and only after a judge signs off. A Texas small estate affidavit (Tex. Est. Code ch. 205) is available only for an INTESTATE estate, only once 30 days have passed since the death, only where no petition for a personal representative is pending or granted, and only where the estate assets excluding homestead and exempt property do not exceed $75,000. It must be sworn by every capable distributee plus two disinterested witnesses, filed with the probate court, and APPROVED by the judge -- what you hand the bank is a clerk-certified copy of the approved affidavit, not a notarized form you printed. Texas publishes no statewide form; the county probate court supplies its own. Above that line, or with a will, the normal Texas route is independent administration, and the bank pays on Letters Testamentary or Letters of Administration. And do not confuse this with an Affidavit of Heirship: in Texas that is a real-property title device recorded in the deed records -- useful for the house and for the mortgage servicer's successor-in-interest package, not a way to make a bank release deposits.