Can a Corporation have a POD Beneficiary?
by Mary Beth Guard Guru BIOS
Question: We have a question with regard to whether or not a Corporation can have a POD beneficiary. We have a client requesting this and our question is, does a Corporation die (or is it the same as death when the owner dies)? Can a corporation name a Payable On Death beneficiary?
Answer: Nope. A corporation cannot have a POD beneficiary. Section 901 of Title 6 of the Oklahoma statutes provides authority for POD accounts. It authorizes them for individuals and/or for joint accounts between individuals. That's it. Corporations and other entities don't die, so they cannot have POD beneficiaries designated on a corporate deposit account.
I think it helps to imagine that your customer is a large corporation, rather than a mom and pop entity. Do you think that its bank account will be affected if one of its thousands of shareholders passes away? Of course not. A corporation is a formal legal entity, separate from its owners. The death of a shareholder in a corporation does not trigger a "death" for purposes of Payable on Death statutes.
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