How to designate beneficiaries at Nicolet National Bank

A P.O.D. designation can sit on an account with one owner or with several. With one owner, the named beneficiaries take the account at the owner's death. With several owners, the surviving owners take first and the beneficiaries take only when the last owner has died.¹

Beneficiaries who survive split the account evenly, unless the designation says otherwise.¹

An owner living in a marital property state may be asked, with the spouse, to sign added paperwork when the spouse is neither an owner of the joint account nor its primary beneficiary.¹

The owner can change the beneficiaries whenever they choose, by giving the bank a written instruction in a form it accepts.¹

If every beneficiary has died before the owner, the account is handled as one owned by that owner alone, and it goes to the owner's estate.¹

If owners of a joint P.O.D. account outlive all the beneficiaries, the account becomes a joint account with survivorship among those owners.¹

The bank must approve the written form before an attorney-in-fact or agent acts on the account. An agent named on the account owns nothing in it, and the agent's authority ends when the sole or last owner dies.¹

Where it suspects financial exploitation of an adult, the bank may hold or turn down a requested change to the account, a change of beneficiaries included.¹

A change of owners takes effect only when the bank agrees to it in writing and updates its records. The bank may instead require a new account in the new owners' names.¹

The bank will set up trust, will or court-ordered arrangements on request but does not advise which arrangement fits the trust. It may decline instructions it sees as a risk, or ask to be indemnified first.¹

Trusts Nicolet serves as sole, co- or successor trustee, and estates where it is personal representative²