Marketing is looking at offering a teen account for 13-17 year olds.
Not requiring a parent to be on the account but allowing parents to receive "activity alerts". I say the parent has to be on the account to receive any information on the account regardless of the child's age.
Being under 18 and legal right to contract is a whole other discussion so I am only asking now for opinions of allowing someone not on the account to receive information about the account.

If it's in your deposit contract that you would allow such a thing, but then how do you make the assertion that your contract is legal when it's signed by a minor? That sounds sticky. As the legal guardian of the minor, they may have some rights, but that's probably state specific and nothing I'd want to comment on.

Sounds like it might be something you need an opinion from legal counsel on. I personally can't come up with a way this would be enforceable. Why not just have it as a joint account to at least make sure you're covered and have a contractually liable individual? I know that's not your question, but it seems like you're opening yourself up for issues that could be avoided fairly easily. Why does marketing want these to specifically be individual accounts? I guess that's the question I'd be asking.

rivergirl - this is purely a State law issue. Some States allow for deposit accounts to be held solely by minors - some do not. Some have caveats regarding the rights of parents and guardians. If your State does not address these issues, then whatever you do - it is going to be a legal free for all if something goes wrong.

Our Marketing department brought up something similar, and we ended up with a Kids in Charge account, with a parent/guardian as a second named joint holder. We didn't feel comfortable with a minor being alone in their signing authority.

We didn't feel comfortable with a minor being alone in their signing authority.

Again, unless your State law allows a minor to contract for a deposit account, the fact that there is parent or guardian on the account jointly would make no difference. The minor could later disavow any transactions that they conducted and the Bank would have no defense.

Our state does allow a minor to contract for a deposit account. We have a special savings account we do for teens enrolled in our local schools. We pay an attractive rate and do allow an ATM card to be issued. We decided we wanted the parents on the account. Some of the balances in these accounts are fairly large so we wanted a parent on the account to help control/monitor it.