So, our customer has passed away and his wife sold his motorcycle. The person who purchased the motorcycle came into the bank with $15,000 in cash. He used $8,000 and paid off the motorcycle loan, and deposited the other $7,000 into the wife's personal account. The loan was only in the name of the deceased individual. So how should I do the CTR? The wife has obviously benefitted, but should the estate be benefitting? I don't have any information on the estate because there is no estate account with our institution.

Any advice would be appreciated.

What I would suggest is that you leave the loan out of it all together. Reverse the loan payment made with cash and deposit the entire $15,000 to the wife's personal account instead.

The CTR could then be completed with the wife as the beneficiary and the person who purchased the bike as the conductor.

Then process an internal advice of charge/debit to to the checking account to pay off the loan. That way there is no cash involved (and no need for reporting)on the loan account owned by the deceased person.


ETA: This may be tricky, though, if the deceased was not an owner of the deposit account. Depending on the circumstances you may need to get the wife's permission to do the debit for the loan payment. But either way I think I would try to leave the deceased party out of it. It will be interesting to see what others think.

Thank you for your response, Sarge. And you are absolutely correct. If the individual had conducted the transactions this way, my job would be much easier. Unfortunately, the transactions have already been completed and processed. I have no way to alter them at this point.

This is a "one off" transaction if I've ever seen one. Section B is the new motorcylist. The first Section A is the surviving spouse. Assuming the surviving spouse was not on the note, the second section A is either the decedent or the decedent's estate. As the decedent can no longer benefit from anything, my opinion is that it's the decedent's estate and you would leave out the information you do not have.

However, I suggest you call the FinCEN Helpline, write a memo about your conversation and simply follow the advice you are given there. I do not think they have a separate playbook with all of the answers, it's just that their advice can't be overruled by an all knowing field examiner.

As for altering transactions for the specific purpose of avoiding CTR filing requirements...naaahhhh.

Note: I changed my display name from "The Sarge" to "Bookworm".

Ken makes sense. I wasn't suggesting altering the transaction to avoid filing requirements, I just wasn't sure you could file a CTR using the deceased person as a beneficiary.

Thank you, Ken, for your response. I took your advice and called the FinCEN helpline. The lady I spoke with confirmed that a deceased person cannot benefit from a transaction, so the estate would be. She also said I should list the individual who purchased the motorcycle in section A, because he was receiving the collateral for the loan that he paid off. So, it looks like I will have three section A's.

Thanks again!