U.S. Accounts
A signed deed does not open a brokerage account. The custodian asks for a legal name that matches the owner, a taxpayer identification number, a withholding certificate, and a list of the people who may give instructions. Families, private bankers, and advisers hit the same list. We prepare the U.S. side of that file so the account can be titled in the name the documents already use.
Recalde Law Firm, P.A. is a Florida law firm with an office in Miami, Florida. We advise on United States law only. We do not practice Mexican law, and we do not give Mexican tax or succession advice. We do not practice the law of any other country. Formation of a non-U.S. entity, and the local law of that jurisdiction, are matters for local counsel. We handle the U.S. architecture: classification, the documents a U.S. custodian and a U.S. court will read, and coordination with the family's tax adviser.
This is account-opening work for a structure that already exists, or that is being put in place with holding structures for U.S. investments. The trust classification itself is on Foreign Trusts. We do not choose a broker, and we do not recommend a product.
The account title has to be the legal owner: the trustee of the named trust, or the partnership or company that owns the assets. A personal-name account, opened because the individual already had a relationship at the firm, leaves the assets outside the structure. Retitling later is a funding question, with its own tax timing. See funding a foreign trust.
The trust or the entity needs an employer identification number for the account and for administration. An EIN does not make anyone a U.S. resident, and it is not a substitute for an SSN or an ITIN. When the responsible party has neither, the IRS online application is not available. See applying for an EIN without an SSN or ITIN.
The withholding certificate follows classification. A foreign grantor trust, a foreign simple trust, and a foreign partnership (including a Canada LP that is a partnership for U.S. purposes) generally give the custodian a Form W-8IMY, with a withholding statement and the grantor's, beneficiary's, or partner's Form W-8BEN or Form W-9, as the case may be. A foreign non-grantor (complex) trust that is the beneficial owner, and a foreign corporation, generally give a Form W-8BEN-E. A non-U.S. individual who is the beneficial owner gives a Form W-8BEN. A U.S. person, including a domestic trust, gives a Form W-9. The tax adviser confirms chapter 3 and chapter 4 status. We confirm that the forms name the same trust or entity as the deed, and, where the form is a W-8IMY, the same beneficial owner the classification requires.
A Form W-8BEN and a Form W-8BEN-E generally remain valid through the end of the third calendar year after the year of signature, and sooner if circumstances change. A Form W-8IMY generally remains valid until circumstances change, but the certificates attached to it, such as the grantor's Form W-8BEN, have their own expiry.
KYC looks through the title. The custodian will ask for the settlor, the trustee, the protector, and the people with a present interest, and it will ask for identification those people can actually produce. A structure that cannot name those persons, because the file was built to avoid naming them, will not be onboarded. Opacity is not the objective. A file the institution can administer is.
The account agreement will ask who can trade, who can move cash, and who can change those authorities. Those names have to be people the trust instrument or the partnership agreement actually authorizes. A protector power the custodian will not administer is not a control the family still has. It is a power that exists on paper and fails at the bank. See protectors and reserved powers and opening a U.S. brokerage account.
If a partnership or a company owns the account, the custodian underwrites that entity as well as the trust above it. Formation documents, a register, an EIN, and a classification position are part of the same package. See holding structures for U.S. investments.
A structure we often see for families from Mexico, Ecuador, or Argentina is a foreign trust whose trustee is asked to open a U.S. custody account, with a holding company or a Canada LP in between when the family already uses one. Families from Chile, Brazil, or Colombia arrive with the same request and a different set of home-country documents. The custodian does not apply those home-country rules. It applies its own KYC program and the U.S. withholding forms. Home-country tax and succession stay with home-country counsel.
We coordinate the U.S. documents: the certificate of trust or the entity papers the bank will accept, the EIN application, the withholding certificate, and a resolution that names who may instruct. The family's tax adviser confirms classification before the first transfer. The private banker keeps the relationship. If the trust has not been read for U.S. purposes, that reading happens on Foreign Trusts before the account is forced open in the wrong name.
Para leer en español: apertura de cuentas en Estados Unidos para un foreign trust o una entidad de tenencia.
The banker is usually the person who receives the rejection. The deed is twenty pages, the KYC form is two, and they do not use the same names. We sit with the banker and the family on the U.S. documents the institution asked for, without taking over the investment relationship. Write as the family, or as the adviser.
Counsel for wealth advisers · Holding structures · Foreign trusts · Private wealth
Write as the family, or as the adviser. Tell us who owns the assets and what the documents currently say. We will schedule a conversation. No commitment required.