In Missouri, is it allowable to charge some dormant accounts a fee and not charge others? I thought on dormant fees you had to assess it on all dormant accounts and were not allowed to waive it but others have a different opinion. It is disclosed at account opening. This is my first post so thank you to all who help me out.

That would be covered by the relevant Missouri abandoned property laws, but without looking them up yet every state that allows a dormant fee to be charged that I have seen in the past does not allow for the fee to be charged inconsistently. I'll look up Missouri's abandoned property laws right now, but if it's not specifically addressed your best bet is to call the department responsible for abandoned property for the State of Missouri.

Thanks! I had read that also and felt like it was saying you had to charge the same across the board but wanted a second opinion.

I'm going to assume you are referring to periodic fees (often monthly or quarterly) charged against accounts that have reached the "dormant" status (however defined in your core system). Among my bank clients I see some charge the fee (often $3 or $5 a month/quarter) across the board, while others do not charge the dormant fee to accounts with at least a minimum balance (such as $100). In either case I always verify that their practice is properly disclosed at account opening. A fee structure such as this has always seemed to me to be at the discretion of the bank (and hopefully properly disclosed).

Now, if you are referring to a fee charged to an account prior to escheatment to the state I would expect that to be governed by state law. I do have a few bank clients that assess a fee (often $50, taken from the balance in the account) when escheating funds to the state. So, in Kentucky anyway, that is permissible.

I would have those clients check the Kentucky Holder Reporting & Instructions manual, specifically page 7: http://www.kytreasury.com/NR/rdonlyres/83D8290E-C852-46CB-AA8E-C4504418BD3F/0/2014KYHolderBook.pdf

I should have been more specific. The banks to which I'm referring are charging that fee to escheat funds to the state of Kentucky are charging that fee to non-interest bearing accounts ONLY. Interest bearing accounts are retained by the bank and the account name is adjusted to reflect that it is an account that was escheated to the Commonwealth of Kentucky.

Yes I was referring to the monthly fee. There was some discussion that you could waive the monthly dormant fee on some types of accounts (such as organizations) but then charge it on individuals. The balance of the account would have no bearing on the fee.