A presumption toward survivorship, the opposite of real estate
Under Miss. Code § 81-5-63, a deposit made in the name of two or more people, payable to any one of them, or payable to any one of them or the survivor, or payable to the survivor or survivors, raises a presumption of joint tenancy with right of survivorship. This is a meaningfully different starting point than Mississippi real estate follows: real property presumes a tenancy in common unless survivorship is expressly declared, while a qualifying bank account presumes survivorship by default, simply from how it's opened.
Broad coverage of deposit types
The statute's definition of "deposit" is broad, covering any form of deposit or account — a savings account, checking account, time deposit, demand deposit, or certificate of deposit, whether negotiable, nonnegotiable, or otherwise. This means the survivorship presumption reaches essentially every common type of bank deposit product, not just a narrow category of accounts.
The bank's protection when paying out
Any part of the deposit, along with any interest or dividends on it, may be paid to any one of the named persons without liability — whether one or more of the others is still living or not. The receipt of the person paid is a valid and sufficient release and discharge for the bank. It's also common practice for Mississippi banks to have depositors sign a specific agreement confirming that the survivor becomes the sole owner of the account when one depositor dies, reinforcing the statutory presumption with an additional contractual layer.
The credit union gap for P.O.D. designations
Here's a distinctive wrinkle worth knowing about: Mississippi has clear statutory authority for pay-on-death (P.O.D.) accounts at both banks and thrift institutions. But no clear statutory authority for P.O.D. accounts specifically at Mississippi credit unions has been identified — unlike joint-with-survivorship and trust account authority, which does exist for credit unions. Anyone whose primary financial relationship is with a Mississippi credit union, rather than a bank or thrift, should specifically confirm with that institution how it actually handles beneficiary designations, since the statutory backing looks different than it does for a traditional bank account.
Real estate follows a related, but distinct, logic
The same basic survivorship concept extends to real estate under Mississippi's joint tenancy and tenancy by the entirety statutes, though real property requires express survivorship language in the deed rather than defaulting to survivorship the way a qualifying bank account does.
Life insurance and retirement accounts
Life insurance and retirement accounts like a 401(k) or IRA follow their own beneficiary-designation rules, separate from the bank account statute described here: the named beneficiary receives the asset directly, outside probate, as long as they're alive when the owner dies. Either one becomes part of the probate estate only if no beneficiary was ever named, every named beneficiary predeceased the owner with no contingent beneficiary in place, or the policy or plan names the owner's own estate.