Georgia treats joint accounts and joint deeds oppositely
Most people assume "joint" means the same thing everywhere. In Georgia it doesn't. A joint bank account passes to the surviving owner by default — O.C.G.A. § 7-1-813 gives the survivor the funds automatically unless there's clear and convincing evidence the parties meant something else. A joint deed to real estate works the opposite way: under O.C.G.A. § 44-6-190, adding a second name to a deed creates a tenancy in common — no survivorship, and the deceased owner's share goes through probate — unless the deed expressly uses words like "joint tenants," "joint tenants and not as tenants in common," or "joint tenants with survivorship." See our full breakdown of Georgia's joint-property rules.
A new option for real estate: the transfer-on-death deed
Since July 1, 2024, Georgia has offered a third path for a house or other real property: a transfer-on-death deed under O.C.G.A. § 44-17-1 et seq. The owner keeps full control during life, can revoke the deed at any time, and the named beneficiary receives the property automatically at death — no probate, no trust, and no need for the joint-tenancy survivorship wording at all.
Beneficiary designations skip probate the usual way
Life insurance, retirement accounts, and payable-on-death (P.O.D.) bank accounts follow the same rule in Georgia as almost everywhere: whoever is named as beneficiary receives the asset directly, without going through the estate, as long as they're alive when the owner dies. See our guide to Georgia beneficiary accounts for how P.O.D. designations interact with the survivorship account rules above.
Georgia isn't a community property state
Unlike Arizona, California, Texas, or eight other states, Georgia is a common-law property state. A married couple's assets aren't automatically split 50/50 — ownership follows whose name is on the title or account, exactly as it would for any other co-owners. That makes the titling questions above, not the marriage itself, the deciding factor for what counts toward the estate.
Where this feeds into other Georgia calculators
The probate-estate total from this tool is the starting point for Georgia's probate cost and executor fee calculators, and for checking whether an estate is small enough for Georgia's small estate shortcuts. Georgia has no state estate or inheritance tax, so this total doesn't feed into a separate state tax calculation the way it would in some other states.