Hello,

What, if any, documentation is required to open a trust deposit account in WI. I have read here on Bankers that some states don't require anything but a verbal confirmation of a trust. We have a customer that is asking us to open a trust account. They provided a trust account that doesn't show who the trustees are, beneficiaries, purpose or anything. All the document has is the fact that they authorizing one of their businesses to deposit money into this new trust. It looks like they copied some words off the internet and pasted it into a word document. Plus, the trust is being set up to benefit a company based in Florida. I don't know what our responsibility is to require documentation for a trust specific account. This is a big commercial customer for us, so we need to be tactful.

Sounds like you are not talking about a personal trust (e.g. John and Jane Smith Family Trust). A trust like that comes into an existence when a trust document is written (outlining all the terms, such as beneficiaries, trustees, asset addition/management/disposition isntructions, etc.) and executed. In other words, if there is a trust, there is a trust document. What your institution requires to open a trust account, is a matter of company policy (including CIP requirements). We would never open a trust without getting documentation (usually the trust document itself) clearly stating who beneficiaries, trustess and successor trustees are and what authority they have been given to act on behalf of the trust.

But what you have on your hands may be something more like an "escrow" account. Again, due to our policy we would not open one of these because there are just too many unknowns: who can access the account, when, etc.