Contribution decides ownership during life
Under S.C. Code § 62-6-103(a), a joint account belongs, during the lifetime of all parties, to the parties in proportion to the net contributions each made to the sums on deposit — unless there's clear and convincing evidence of a different intent. Two names on an account doesn't automatically mean an even, 50-50 split; South Carolina looks at who actually put the money in.
Survivorship still applies at death, by default
Despite this contribution-based lifetime rule, § 62-6-104(a) provides that sums remaining on deposit at the death of a party belong to the surviving party or parties, as against the estate of the decedent — unless a writing was filed with the financial institution, at the time the account was created or afterward, indicating a different intention. So the default at death favors the survivor, even though the default during life is contribution-based.
The case of the emptied account
A real South Carolina Supreme Court case shows exactly how these two rules interact. A man named as a joint owner on an account hadn't contributed any money to it — his wife, the decedent, was the sole contributor. Seven days before she died, he transferred all the funds out of the joint account into a separate account titled solely in his own name. After her death, he claimed the money based on the joint account's right of survivorship.
Why the maneuver failed
The court ruled against him on two independent grounds. First, under § 62-6-103(a), because he hadn't contributed to the account, the funds belonged to his wife during her lifetime — meaning he had no legal right to move them into his own name in the first place. Second, the statutory term "sums on deposit" specifically means the balance actually payable on the account, and doesn't extend to funds that have already been withdrawn. Because he'd emptied the joint account before she died, there were no sums on deposit in it at the moment of her death for the survivorship provision to even apply to. The court held § 62-6-103(a) doesn't stop applying just because the contributor later dies — it had already determined who owned those funds seven days earlier, when he withdrew them.
Why this matters beyond the specific case
This case is a clean illustration of how South Carolina's two-part structure — contribution during life, survivorship at death — actually protects against a specific kind of last-minute maneuver: a non-contributing joint owner emptying a shared account right before the other party dies, hoping the "joint account" label alone will justify the transfer. Because South Carolina ties lifetime ownership to actual contribution rather than just the names on the account, that kind of pre-death withdrawal doesn't automatically convert borrowed access into real ownership.
P.O.D. designations, life insurance, and retirement accounts
A payable-on-death (P.O.D.) beneficiary designation works differently from joint ownership between co-owners, since the named P.O.D. beneficiary simply receives whatever remains once the owner dies, without the same contribution analysis. Life insurance and retirement accounts like a 401(k) or IRA follow the same basic rule — the named beneficiary receives the asset directly, outside probate, as long as they're alive when the owner dies, and it only becomes part of the probate estate if no beneficiary was ever named or every named beneficiary predeceased the owner with no contingent beneficiary in place.