I guess this is the forum to ask this question. When a child under the age of 21 opens an account with your bank and say it is a checking account for his use. I know that minors cannot legally enter into a contract but does the account have to be set up as a UTMA account. This is the money that the person could be earning in his job.

Then how do you do CIP on the customer.

We do not consider anyone 18 or older as minors.

We also will not open a DDA account in a minor's name only, they must be joint with an adult.

We will refer to our internal CIP for guidence as this has been addresses in our CIP procedures.

Baseballfan, it depends on your state laws. Georgia allows banks to open up accounts for minors as long as they can print/sign their own name. However, we do not follow that guideline and require it to be an UTMA or a joint account with a parent. The legal age of majority in Georgia is 18.

We require checking accounts for individuals under the age of 18 to be a joint account also. Debit cards can be issued but the adult owner of the account must sign a statement of responsibility.

As Skittles points out, it is a matter of state law as to whether a minor can maintain a bank account without an adult. For example, California permits a minor to have a bank account and all decisions made by the minor are final & can't be rescinded. On this issue you need to check your state law (as well as what is the age at which a minor becomes an adult - I would suspect it is 18).

On the UTMA issue, I would suggest you check your state law to see if a minor beneficiary can be the "transferor" (i.e., the person who is making the transfer to the minor). Somehow I doubt a minor has the legal ability to make the transfer in question - but again this would be a matter of state law.