For people of modest means who either have no Will or else have a Will that contains no estate tax or trust planning, survivorship accounts are often fine. In addition, many people have household checking accounts or other accounts that are intended to pass outright to the surviving account holder, and persons who want to make a specific cash gift may put the cash, etc. in a POD or other survivorship account. So long as the dollar amounts are relatively small, survivorship provisions in these situations generally do not cause a problem; however, the account holder must understand that the account will pass outright to the person(s) named in the survivorship provision (if he or she survives), not the person(s) named in the account holder's Will (including the Executor, who may need the funds to pay estate debts). In most other cases, survivorship accounts should be avoided.