Is it appropriate or advised to have an entity as a convenience (authorized) signer on a personal account?
It would seem to me that this may be an issue of state law (WI) but I am not finding anything explicit in the statutes.
Was wondering if anyone has experience with this? We have a situation where there is an individual and a guardianship entity. The guardianship entity wants to give the individual an account that they can control, but that if they need the guardian to step in for any reason (as long as the individual is not deceased) they would be able to. The guardianship entity already has an account that they jointly own with the individual, but they want this type of scenario as well.

First off, I don't think you can have a JOINT account between an individual and an entity, per FDIC Insurance guidelines. A joint account is between to human beings.

Then the other question about the convenience signer, I'm thinking that it would just be the Guardian and NOT the Guardianship entity that would be the convenience signer.

I think you need to have this conversation with your legal counsel.

An entity can't sign anything. People sign, either for themselves, on behalf of another individual (as attorney-in-fact, guardian, conservatory, custodian or some other form of authorized or fiduciary signer), or on behalf of an entity (authorized signer). If there is a guardianship involved, the ward should not have signature access at all.

Just what do you mean by "guardianship entity"?

We have a customer that has court appointed guardianships for many individuals. The accounts are for benefit of the ward and they the ward does not have access to the acct. Apparently there are some higher functioning wards that the entity would like to give a little more access to their money. The guardian wants to have an account opened for the ward, provide an allowance for them and let them write checks and have a debit card if that ward qualifies. The guardian would also like to be a convenience signer if they would need to help out the ward. Of course we would have a resolution of all of the appropriate signers for the convenience signer, in this case the entity that is the guardian, in the form of a resolution.

OK. Now I see what you mean by "guardianship entity." But I question whether the requested arrangement is one that the law will permit. Unless the guardianship laws in your state are different from those I am familiar with, a ward is legally incompetent, and can't enter into a contract.

I suggest you run this idea by competent counsel in your jurisdiction.

Good point by you!
I'll have to look into the ward is declared incompetent or what? In that case, yeah, we shouldn't be opening accounts owned by just the ward regardless of how the guardian wants the arrangement. This is a fairly big operation, I would think that they would know that, but perhaps, like you said, things are structured to be able to do that in my state. Off to the statutes!

Please let us know what you learn.

I had to go to our legal counsel to resolve an issue with some of our estate accounts. The executors (who are attorneys) were appointing POAs on the accounts. Of course since they are attorneys the branches involved did not question the legality of the situation.

So just because they should know; doesn't mean they do know (or do know but will try to take shortcuts)

Oh yes, many times an attorney will not know banking law.