To have all of our money insured by FDIC, should we not have more than $200,000 in joint accounts in one particular bank?
The FDIC provides separate insurance limits to depositors of a depositary institution for each capacity in which they are held. At the risk of oversimplifying some rather complicated rules, the accounts of an individual in his or her individual capacity are now covered up to a combined balance of $250,000 (see the note below).
Separately, an individual gets up to $250,000 coverage for his or her interests in joint accounts in the same institution. For example, if you have an ownership interest in three separate joint accounts, one that's joint with a spouse, one that's joint with a brother, and a third that's joint with a friend, start by assuming that your interest is half of each account's balance, or a third, if an account has three joint owners, etc. Add up your pieces of all the joint accounts, and that total will be insured up to $250,000 so the amount that joint accounts are insured will depend on who owns the accounts and the total of each owner's interests in all joint accounts at the bank.
You can arrange your account balances between joint accounts and individual accounts with a spouse, for example, to maximize your deposit coverage. Using only individual and joint accounts, a husband and wife could have $1,000,000 in insured balances: $500,000 in the joint account and $250,000 in each spouse's individual account. [Spouses were used only as an example. The same limits would apply if the two individual were totally unrelated to one another.]
There are other rights and capacities in which balances can be covered, in addition to individual and joint accounts. Your bank should be able to provide you more information.
Note: This page has been updated to reflect the temporary increase in deposit insurance limits enacted as part of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, effective October 3, 2008. The "standard maximum deposit insurance amount" on FDIC and NCUSIF deposit coverage was increased to $250,000 beginning on 10/3/08. It will revert to $100,000 after 12/31/2009.
Published on BankingQuestions.com 7/16/08
Revised 10/9/2008)
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To have all of our money insured by 
The FDIC provides separate insurance limits to depositors of a depositary institution for each capacity in which they are held. At the risk of oversimplifying some rather complicated rules, the accounts of an individual in his or her individual capacity are now covered up to a combined balance of $250,000 (see the note below).