Estate of Floy M. Christensen - Page 12




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               sets forth the joint account holders’ respective owner-                
               ship rights to the funds deposited in the account.                     
               Consistent with this statute, and as stipulated in this                
               case, Floy Christensen was at all times the owner of                   
               all of the funds in the joint account.                                 
                    Wash. Rev. Code � 30.22.130 preserves Floy                        
               Christensen’s ownership rights to the funds in the                     
               joint account, notwithstanding that a financial insti-                 
               tution properly made payment of the funds to her chil-                 
               dren as joint account holders. * * *                                   
               We find the estate’s reliance on certain statutory provi-              
          sions of the laws of the State of Washington to support its                 
          position that the transfers of funds represented by the November            
          1995 checks and the January 1996 checks constitute gifts made by            
          decedent to be misplaced.  None of those provisions, which are              
          part of the Financial Institution Individual Account Deposit Act            
          (Act), see Wash. Rev. Code Ann. ch. 30.22 (West 1986),3 grants              
          authority to a person named on a joint bank account who does not            
          own the funds in such an account to make a gift of all or a                 
          portion of those funds on behalf of the actual owner of those               
          funds.                                                                      
               As the estate accurately indicates, Wash. Rev. Code Ann.               
          sec. 30.22.050 (West 1986) provides for the creation of joint               
          bank accounts, and Wash. Rev. Code Ann. sec. 30.22.090(2) (West             
          1986) provides that funds on deposit in a joint account belong to           


               3All references to the Revised Code of Washington Annotated            
          are to that Code in effect on the date of decedent’s death and on           
          the various dates on which the November 1995 checks and the                 
          January 1996 checks were written and subsequently paid by                   
          Seafirst Bank.                                                              





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