Father of young children unexpectedly passes away. Mother wants to set up account to accept donations for children. We considered a UTMA but since there are two children, one account won't work. Is there a good way to set this up short of requiring her to go to an attorney and draw up a trust agreement?

At a former bank, I had a form we used called a "Tragedy/Special Purpose Account" form. I don't remember exactly what all was on it (although I had typed it up based on a info from a seminar one time), but it was basically for instances where someone wanted to take donations on behalf of someone who had lost their home in a fire or some other kind of tragedy, or even some kind of simple organization. I know the customer filled out who the signers on the account would be, what Tax ID number would be used, what the purpose of the account was, and who had the authority (signers?) to distribute the funds appropriately. In your case, would the funds be held until the minors are of age? Regardless, you might want to add a hold harmless statement that the bank is not responsible for how the funds are used. On the other hand, since it is a parent wanting to do it, it might be easier to just open an UTMA account for each child if the funds are going to be held for the child anyway until they are of age.

Article on tragedy account.

I encourage you to either require a formal trust or set up one UTMA account for each child with the surviving parent as the custodian.

Could the bank itself ever open one of these accounts in the absence of another sponsor? I'm thinking not.

We had a similar situation that ended up with the account being frozen by the court until formal trusts could be established for the children.