Can a trustee of his own trust deposit a check made payable to the trust into his own personal accounts. Example. the check is payable to John Doe Trustee for the John Doe Trust. There are similar post asking this question but it does not specify that the trustee is conducting for their own trust.

Seems that the check should go into the Trust account and the Trust should then issue him a check, even tho' he's the Trustee.

OOH a can and may question.

Yes it can happen. It probably did and you are now trying to figure out what to do.

A check is a negotiable instrument. A trustee may have the authority to sign on behalf of the trust to transfer ownership of the check to someone else. Only the trust agreement would bestow that authority.

Is it a good idea? No. The trustee has fiduciary duties to the trust (and therefore the beneficiaries). Only thorough recordkeeping can confirm that the trustee has only acted within their authority.

Al

Even tho' it may be "his" trust, and even tho' he may have authority through the trust to negotiate the check to himself (clearly, he can't deposit the check to his personal account without the endorsement of the trust), you don't know that there aren't other beneficiaries. If so, and if the trustee is skimming funds from the trust by depositing them to his own account, one of those beneficiaries might bring suit to recover funds, and discover that the bank had notice of the breach of the trustee's fiduciary duty under UCC 3-307, which opens up the bank's "deep pockets" to the damages claim.

People create trusts for reasons, and then sometimes bridle at the extra paperwork or steps needed to deal with those trusts. Your bank should not become a party to a problem by helping those people sidestep procedures they themselves opted into (knowingly or unknowingly) when they created the trusts.