I have a customer that wishes to establish his sole proprietorship account jointly with his wife, but without her ablility as an authorized signatory. It would seem impossible to police or monitor this arrangment. One would normally arrange this account as a payable-on-death account. Is there anything that would prohibit us from establishing a trustee account as a d/b/a account? Your advise would be appreciated.

I agree that monitoring of the account would be next to impossible.

As to making the DBA into a POD account, I would probably look at state law first to see what the laws are there. Seems that if he dies and she is his wife, she would get the dollars anyway.

You cannot open a "sole" account as a "joint" account, hence the "sole", meaning one person owns the account. It sounds like you want to open a DBA and have the wife be the POD. In GA you could accomplish this by opening the account as:

John Doe
dba, John's Construction Company
POD: Jane Doe

I would not assume that upon John's death the money will automatically go to Jane without John naming Jane as POD. Signature cards can over-ride a will.

If I understand: He wants her to have ownership and survivorship in the funds, but no access to the account? Sorry, survivorship is an element that can be separated, but ownership and access go together.

As you and the previous respondent concluded, a POD provision (if acceptable under state law) will guarantee her rights in survivorship.