The Effective Date and Its Practical Impact
This is a short but important statute. It answers one straightforward question: when do Arizona's TOD securities registration rules kick in? The answer is that they apply to registrations made at any time, but only when the account owner dies on or after December 31, 1994.
This article applies to registrations of securities in beneficiary form made before or after December 31, 1994, by decedents dying on or after December 31, 1994.
A.R.S. § 14-6311That means if someone set up a TOD registration on a brokerage account before this article became law and later passed away after the effective date, the registration is still valid and governed by these rules. There is no gap or ambiguity about retroactive application.
Why the Date Matters
For anyone administering an estate today, this statute confirms that all existing TOD registrations on securities in Arizona fall under the current legal framework. There is no need to worry about whether a registration was created before the article took effect. As long as the owner's death occurred on or after December 31, 1994, the protections, obligations, and transfer procedures in this article all apply. For practical purposes, every TOD securities registration in Arizona today is covered by this framework.