How to Open a Trust Account at a Bank

How to Open a Trust Account, Step by Step

1. Have a signed trust. The bank opens the account for a trust that already exists. It does not create one.
2. Get a certification of trust. A short document signed by the trustee that proves the trust exists and who can act for it, without showing who inherits. Keep the full trust with you in case the banker asks for a page.
3. Decide whether to open a new account or retitle an existing one. A retitled account usually keeps its number, so checks and automatic payments keep working. Ask the bank which it allows.
4. Bring every trustee and their identification. Banks commonly ask for government ID for each trustee, and some want co-trustees present together.
5. Settle the tax number. A revocable trust you control usually uses your own Social Security number while you are alive. Confirm what the bank will record, and see our guide to trust tax returns and EINs.

What Do Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Ally Require for a Trust Account?

Chase asks for its own Chase Certification of Trust, Wells Fargo asks for a certification when a trustee dies, and Ally takes a certification of trust or listed pages of the trust and is the only one of the four that opens a trust account online. Bank of America’s published documents do not name a form, and say it may refuse documents that are not on its own forms. We read each bank’s own deposit agreement, trust forms and estate guides. “Not published” means the bank’s public documents are silent on the point, not that the bank refuses.

Each bank has its own page with the quoted rules and links to the documents.

• Chase Trust Account: What Chase Requires to Open One
• Bank of America Trust Account: What the Bank Requires
• Wells Fargo Trust Account: What the Bank Requires
• Ally Bank Trust Account: How to Open One, Step by Step
• Trust account requirements at 185 banks, brokers and insurers

The Certification of Trust

Florida lets a trustee give a bank a certification of trust instead of the trust instrument. It covers eight points, namely that the trust exists and when it was signed, who created it, who the current trustee is and the trustee’s address, the trustee’s powers, whether a trust director must approve the transaction, whether the trust can be revoked and by whom, whether co-trustees must all sign, and how the trust takes title. It does not have to say who inherits.

The certification must state that the trust has not been revoked or amended in a way that makes it wrong, and any trustee may sign it. A bank that relies on it without knowing it is wrong is protected, and it may still ask for the pages of the trust that name the trustee and give the power to act. Some banks, including Chase, use their own certification form.

Who Can Sign on a Trust Account?

The trustees named in the trust are the people who sign on a trust account, and a beneficiary signs only if the trust also makes that person a trustee. People ask me whether a co-trustee can sign alone, and the honest answer is that the trust and the bank decide it together. Florida lets co-trustees act by majority when they cannot agree, the certification of trust must say whether all of them have to sign, and Ally, for example, lets any listed trustee act alone.

A power of attorney does not make anyone a signer on a trust account. Florida law bars an agent from exercising powers the principal holds as trustee, so when you are your own trustee and lose capacity, the successor trustee named in the trust signs, and the agent named in your power of attorney does not. The two roles often go to the same person, and when they go to different people the trust account and the accounts in your own name end up under different people’s control.

Practice pointer. Families name a successor trustee in the trust and a different agent in the power of attorney without noticing, and the bank learns of the split on the day it matters. Read the two documents side by side before the bank appointment, and decide on purpose who will sign for which accounts.

A Trust Account or a POD Account?

A trust account is owned by the trust now, and your successor trustee manages it if you become unable to, under the trust’s instructions. A payable-on-death account stays in your name and passes to the named beneficiaries at your death, outright. Both avoid probate.

The difference shows up at incapacity and in how the money is paid. Ally, for example, will not accept a power of attorney on a trust account, so the successor trustee is the one who acts. A POD account pays each beneficiary directly, and at Wells Fargo a beneficiary generally must survive all owners to receive anything, so a share can skip a predeceased child’s children. Titling an account “in trust for” someone without trust documents usually creates a POD account rather than a trust account, at Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo alike.

FDIC Insurance on Trust Accounts

The FDIC insures trust deposits at $250,000 for each beneficiary the grantor names, counting at most five, so up to $1,250,000 per grantor at one bank. Payable-on-death accounts and trust accounts at the same bank are added together toward that limit. A beneficiary who inherits only if someone else has already died does not count toward the five.

What Does It Cost to Set Up a Trust and Title the Accounts?

A revocable trust drafted on its own is a flat fee from $2,400, or $3,200 for a couple. The Complete Trust Plan is a flat fee from $3,200, or $4,500 for a couple, and it adds the will, the durable power of attorney, the health-care documents, one deed moving your Florida home into the trust, and help retitling your accounts. Government costs such as recording fees are additional and passed through at cost, and advertised fees are honored for 90 days from the posted date.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common Situations

The trust that owned nothing. A couple signs a revocable trust and never retitles their bank accounts. At the second death the accounts are still in their names, so the trust they paid for does not reach them and the accounts go through probate.

The incapacity that a POD account does not solve. A widower names his daughter as POD beneficiary on every account instead of retitling them. When he develops dementia, the POD designations do nothing, because they take effect only at death. An account owned by his trust would have let her step in as successor trustee.

Sources of Law

• Fla. Stat. §736.1017 (annotated) (certification of trust; contents (1)(a) to (h); any trustee may sign (2); statement of no revocation or amendment (3); dispositive terms not required (4); excerpts on request (5); reliance protection (6) and (7)).
• 12 C.F.R. §330.10 (FDIC coverage of revocable trust accounts; $250,000 per eligible beneficiary up to five; aggregation; contingent beneficiaries excluded).
• Treas. Reg. §1.671-4(b)(2)(i)(A) (the trustee of a trust wholly owned by one grantor may furnish the grantor’s name and taxpayer identification number to payors); see also Treas. Reg. §301.6109-1(a)(2).
• Bank rules: Chase Deposit Account Agreement (effective 6/14/2026); Bank of America Deposit Agreement and Disclosures (effective May 15, 2026) and Estate Services Client Resource Guide; Wells Fargo Estate Care Center checklist and Deposit Account Agreement; Ally Bank Accounts for Trust FAQs, Trust Account Application, Trust Conversion Request Form and Deposit Agreement. Quotations, page numbers and links are on each bank’s page. Retrieved September 24 and 25, 2026, read again September 28, 2026.
• Fla. Stat. §736.0703 (annotated)(1) (cotrustees may act by majority decision); §709.2201(3)(e) (an agent may not exercise powers and authority granted to the principal as trustee); §709.2202(5) (a withdrawal from an account held in survivorship or payable on death is not a change to the beneficiary designation; no duty to inquire; financial institution not liable for good faith reliance; agent’s fiduciary duties preserved).
• The case retold below is Beane v. SunTrust Banks, Inc., 47 So. 3d 922 (Fla. 4th DCA 2010), decided under former §709.08 (2002), which ch. 2011-210 replaced with the Florida Power of Attorney Act. Opinion read in full from CourtListener text on October 15, 2026.

What a Payable-on-Death Name Protects While You Are Alive

In one case I have reviewed, a niece used her aunt’s power of attorney the day after the aunt signed it, and $150,000 left an account the aunt had set aside for someone else.

In 2002 a Florida woman signed a durable power of attorney naming her niece as her agent, worded broadly enough to let the niece act in any way the woman could act herself. The woman also kept a bank account titled in trust for another woman (the old form of a payable-on-death account), so that the other woman would receive the money at her death. The next day the niece used the power of attorney to move $150,000 out of that account and into an account in someone else’s name. In 2007 the person appointed to handle the woman’s affairs, and later her estate, sued the bank for letting the money go. The trial court dismissed the suit and the Fourth District affirmed in 2010, because the owner of an account like that can withdraw every dollar at any time, so an agent acting for the owner can too, and a bank that honors the power of attorney is protected. Had the $150,000 sat in an account titled to her revocable trust, the successor trustee she chose would have controlled it once she could not, and the niece’s power of attorney would not have let her sign on it, because Florida law today bars an agent from acting as the owner’s trustee. I charge $2,400 to draft a revocable trust on its own, and the Complete Trust Plan at $3,200 includes retitling the accounts into it.

My reading of that case is that the beneficiary name on the account protected the other woman only at the aunt’s death and not for a single day before it. I have a few take-home points.

The first is what a beneficiary line does. A payable-on-death or “in trust for” beneficiary has no right to the money until the owner dies, and Florida’s current power of attorney law says in so many words that a withdrawal by an agent does not count as changing the beneficiary and that the bank has no duty to ask why. Avoid the plan in which the beneficiary line on a bank account is the only thing deciding who receives the money, because an agent under a broad power of attorney can withdraw the balance the day after the document is signed.

The second is who holds which document. I check the successor trustee and the agent side by side in every plan I draft, because a trust account answers to one of them and an account in your own name answers to the other, and an owner who names two different people should know which accounts each one will control.

The case has two limits worth knowing. The court decided only whether the bank had to repay the money, and it said nothing about whether the niece did anything wrong with it. The case also applied the power of attorney statute Florida replaced in 2011, and the current statute reaches the same result on withdrawals from a payable-on-death account.

Kevin D. Klagge, Esq., admitted in Florida since 2012. The case described above is a decision of a Florida court rather than a matter handled by this firm. Past results do not guarantee a similar outcome.

Updated on October 15, 2026. Reviewed by Kevin D. Klagge, Esq., Fla. Bar No. 99502. StepUpLaw is not affiliated with any bank named here. General information about Florida law, not legal advice, and no attorney-client relationship is created. Do not send confidential information until we have agreed to represent you.