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in RCWA 30.22.130 in order to determine the rights of individuals
to funds in an account or in order to determine the rights of a
financial institution to make or withhold payment and/or to take
any other action with regard to funds held under a contract of
deposit. We conclude that the term “depositor” is utilized in
RCWA 30.22.130 in order to determine the rights of individuals to
funds in an account and is not utilized in that section in order
to determine the rights of a financial institution to make or
withhold payment and/or to take any other action with regard to
funds held under a contract of deposit. We further conclude that
the definition of the term “depositor” that appears in RCWA
30.22.130 is an individual who owns the funds in an account. See
RCWA 30.22.040(11).
At all times, the only individual who owned the funds in the
Seafirst joint account was decedent. RCWA 30.22.130 preserved
her ownership rights to the funds deposited in that account.
Unless decedent authorized Mr. Christensen and Ms. Hastie to make
gifts on behalf of decedent of certain funds in the Seafirst
joint account by issuing the November 1995 checks and the January
1996 checks to the payees indicated on those checks, when
Seafirst Bank paid those checks, decedent, as the owner of the
funds so paid, had the right to sue the joint account holders,
Mr. Christensen and Ms. Hastie, in order to recover those funds.
See RCWA 30.22.130; see also Kalk v. Security Pac. Bank Wash.
N.A., 866 P.2d at 1279.
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