How to Fill Out the Edward Jones Transfer on Death (TOD) Form

The Edward Jones Transfer on Death form, formally the TOD Agreement, is a downloadable PDF you complete to name the people who will receive your brokerage account assets directly at your death, bypassing probate. You can get it from the Edward Jones website or through your local financial advisor, and once the completed form is accepted at the firm’s St. Louis headquarters, the designation stays in effect until you change or revoke it.¹

Confirm the Form Fits Your Account

The TOD Agreement works with individually owned accounts, joint accounts with rights of survivorship, tenancy-by-the-entireties accounts, and community-property accounts with rights of survivorship. If your account is held as tenants in common or as community property without survivorship rights, each owner can apply a TOD designation to their own portion.²

The agreement covers securities and cash held in Edward Jones’s name as nominee. Several holdings are specifically excluded and will need separate planning:

Variable and fixed annuities, which use their own beneficiary designations.
Precious metals such as gold and silver held in the account.
Commodity positions.
Limited partnerships not held in Edward Jones’s name as nominee, with exchange-traded partnerships as the exception.
Mutual funds held outside Edward Jones, including linked mutual funds.

If any of these appear in your portfolio, the TOD form won’t move them; you’ll need to address them through other estate planning tools.²

Information the Form Asks For

At the top, the form wants your full legal name and Edward Jones account number so the designation attaches to the right portfolio. For each beneficiary, you need to provide:

Full legal name
Full Social Security number, or a tax identification number issued by the U.S. or Canada
Date of birth
Relationship to you (spouse, child, and so on)

The tax identification number is mandatory for the designation to be valid. The narrow exception is a beneficiary who hasn’t been assigned one yet, such as a newborn without a Social Security number.²

You can name primary beneficiaries, who are first in line, and contingent beneficiaries, who inherit only if no primary beneficiary survives you. For each person you can assign an equal share or a specific percentage, carried out to two decimal places if you need that precision.²

Choosing a Per Stirpes Designation

Per stirpes is worth marking if you want a beneficiary’s share to pass to their own children in the event they die before you do. The Latin phrase means “by branch.”³ Without it, a predeceased beneficiary’s share is typically split among the remaining named beneficiaries, and that family branch’s descendants receive nothing.

Naming a Minor

You can name a minor, but a child generally cannot manage investment assets directly. The common workaround is to name an adult custodian under your state’s Uniform Transfers to Minors Act, using language like “[Name of custodian], as custodian for [name of minor] under the [state] Uniform Transfers to Minors Act until age [termination age].” State termination ages run from 18 to 30. Naming a trust as beneficiary or appointing a property guardian in your will are other options.

Spousal Consent in Community-Property States

If you’re married and live, or previously lived, in a community-property state, and you’re naming anyone other than your spouse as the sole primary beneficiary, Edward Jones requires a separate spousal consent form. Your spouse must sign it in front of a disinterested witness, meaning someone not named in the TOD agreement. A branch office administrator can serve as that witness. The spousal consent form does not require notarization.¹

The community-property states are Arizona, California, Idaho, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin. If you were ever married while living in one of these states, the requirement may still apply after a move. Your financial advisor can confirm whether spousal consent is needed for your situation.

Signing and Submitting the Form

The account owner signs the TOD agreement. On a joint account with rights of survivorship, all account owners must sign.⁴ Notarization is not required. Edward Jones’s spousal consent guidance says so explicitly, and the TOD form itself carries no notary or medallion signature guarantee requirement.¹

The completed form has to be received and accepted at Edward Jones’s headquarters in St. Louis, Missouri for the designation to take effect. Handing it in through your financial advisor’s office is the most reliable route, because the office can check that the form is complete before it goes to the home office. Once processed and accepted, the designation is effective as of the date you signed.²

If you want Edward Jones to review draft language before you sign, you can fax it to (877) 818-0584 or call the Estates Hotline at (888) 441-5475, open Monday through Friday from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Central Time.⁵

Changing or Revoking the Designation Later

A TOD designation is never permanent. You can change it at any time by filing a new beneficiary form, or revoke it by submitting a Letter of Revocation Form. Edward Jones follows a last-in-time rule: the most recently executed and accepted form completely replaces any earlier version. No formal legal rescission is needed.²

Certain events should trigger a review right away: a beneficiary’s death, a marriage, a new child, or a shift in your financial goals. If every named beneficiary predeceases you and you haven’t updated the form, the assets revert to your estate for probate, which is the outcome the TOD was meant to prevent.

After a Divorce

Whether divorce automatically revokes a TOD naming a former spouse depends on state law. A growing number of states follow the Uniform Probate Code, which treats divorce as an automatic revocation of any beneficiary designation in favor of a former spouse or their relatives, unless a court order, a marital property agreement, or the governing instrument says otherwise. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of these statutes in Sveen v. Melin in 2018. Because coverage varies and the details differ even among adopting states, filing a fresh TOD form after a divorce is safer than relying on the automatic rule.

What the Form Sets Up for Your Beneficiaries

After your death, a beneficiary (or their fiduciary, or the personal representative of your estate) files a Request for Execution of Non-probate Transfer Form with Edward Jones. The firm also requires a certified death certificate for you and for any beneficiary who died before you, plus an inheritance tax waiver or consent to transfer in states that require one. Edward Jones may request additional documents at its discretion.²

A $300 processing fee is deducted from the account assets before distribution and is due when the Request for Execution form is filed.⁴ Once the home office has everything, the transfer is handled through Edward Jones’s Express Estates service, which processes firm-held securities within roughly 72 hours; securities routed through a third-party transfer agent still leave Express Estates within 72 hours, though the agent may add its own time. Incomplete paperwork is the most common source of delay.⁶

1
Edward Jones. Transfer on Death
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Edward Jones. Edward Jones Transfer on Death Agreement
3
Cornell Law Institute. Per Stirpes
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Edward Jones. Transfer on Death Agreement
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Edward Jones. Custom Beneficiary Designations
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Edward Jones. Estate Services