<p>My son got his first paycheck today. He doesn’t have a bank account, and frankly I don’t think we’ll tackle that until summer vacation. Can he sign it over to me and have me deposit it in my account and just give him the $? </p>
<p>I’m pretty sure that’s what I did as a kid when I got birthday checks.</p>
<p>We did this recently with a check my D got from a college reimbursing her for her plane ticket to accepted students day – I paid for the ticket, but they sent the check to her – no way was I letting her just keep the $600 There is a specific way she has to endorse the check, BUT because she did not have an account at the bank where I was trying to deposit it, they made me bring her in with me (with ID) to cash the check. I am a personal banking customer of long standing at this bank, and they still required this. So you can, but you probably should just take him along and have him endorse the check exactly as they say to. Banks are stricter than they used to be these days on this stuff, I think – so much fraud.</p>
<p>One suggestion I have is to open a joint checking account with your kid (they don’t really allow accounts for kids under 18 at most banks these days), and get him a debit/ATM card for the account.</p>
<p>How old is your son? The Bank of America e-banking account is the best bet out there. You don’t have to carry a minimum balance. The only thing is you have to use the ATM for all of your transactions (or carry a $1,500 average daily balance) to avoid fees. You can deposit checks in all of the ATM’s.</p>
<p>small banks will do it, but bigger banks are now refusing it. What Bank America does allow is for D1 to go the bank and deposit the check in my account if she provides an ID and signs it over.</p>
<p>S1 is a lifeguard for town pool and was required this year to have direct deposit. We set him up with a debit card on his savings account.</p>
<p>I can’t do it if I bring it into the bank but the check reader atm will let my son endorse it to me. I don’t think it reads the endorsement and as of now I’ve done it several times and they haven’t caught it later.</p>
<p>Why not take him to the bank and have him open up his own account now rather than later? It doesn’t take long and he might as well get into the routine of going to the bank and handling his paychecks on his own. It’s a good learning experience.</p>
<p>We added our kids to our checking account a long time ago. Son has his own account now but he has access to ours as well. Daughter isn’t working yet so she doesn’t have her own account.</p>
<p>We did open accounts for them when they were a lot younger (bank had a promotion where they put money into the account) but they never had any transactions and the bank sent a letter several years later stating that they would close the account if there was no activity for a certain period of time.</p>
<p>You have to be careful with this. If they do catch it later, they will make you come down and endorse it properly (and not give you the funds until they do). For 13 years I deposited checks made out to my business through the ATM to my business account with no endorsement at all. Then one day the bank called and said they had a check that was improperly endorsed and would not credit the funds until I came to the bank and fixed it. They want “For Deposit Only: <company name=”“>” written in the endorsement section. It was a pain, and annoying that they finally decided to enforce this after 13 years of weekly deposits where they didn’t seem to care.</company></p>
<p>I’ve been depositing my son’s checks into my account for 4 years (BoA). He just signs the back. We are going down this week to open him an eBanking account and I’ll just transfer what I owe him into it.</p>
<p>Bank America told me while the ATM would accept it, the proof department would most likely reject it and you would get charged a fee similar to a bounced check. Not worth the risk IMO.</p>
<p>Many banks won’t cash checks drawn on them at all, if you don’t have an account with the bank. Some will cash their own checks, but only for a fee.</p>
<p>He’s 14, and he doesn’t yet have a state ID. I don’t think he can just walk in and open an account or cash a check without one although I could be wrong. </p>
<p>Going to the bank where the check is written won’t work, since that appears to be in Sioux Fall, SD and we live on the East Coast. </p>
<p>We’ll need to go open an account for him, but I assume I need to be there for that, and this is my crunch period at work. I don’t anticipate he and I being home at a time when the bank is open before the end of the school year in 3 weeks.</p>
<p>Just add him to your account. It can be done very easily and quickly. He likely will not be able to have an independent account. He’s too young. </p>
<p>He doesn’t need to be there for you to add him to the account.</p>
<p>I just added my fiance to my account, and he had to be there, and while my mother (who is already on the account) did not have to be there, I had to drive to her house to get her to sign the paper and then drive back and return it in order to get the change processed. She has to authorize any changes I want to make to my own account. That said, I like having her on my account and plan to keep it that way indefinitely. Parent and child on a joint account is a very convenient arrangement for emergencies large and small.</p>
<p>Are you sure no branches of this bank have Saturday hours? I thought mine didn’t but I guess they recently changed it. I’m not aware of any banks anymore that don’t have any evening or weekend time.</p>
<p>Ah… I would need to be crazy to add my kids to my bank accounts. I trust them completely, BUT those accounts have a whole lot of money in them sometimes. I don’t necessarily trust all of their friends who might somehow get access to their ATM card or online PIN. I also don’t particularly want my kids to be able to look at all of my financial transactions. </p>
<p>If he needs the money now, you could pay him cash and then take him to the bank in a few weeks to deposit the checks into your account. Or pay him for one check, and have him hold the other two for opening an account. It will probably have to be a joint account with you, banks do not open accounts solely in the names of minors any more like they did when we were kids. Note that the bank will likely not allow him access to the funds immediately for a new account, they will want to wait until the checks clear. Also prepare him for the fact that bank accounts usually have fees (cost of checks, monthly fees that might be waived for minimum balances, etc.).</p>
<p>IP, you completely misunderstand. You can absolutely get them a separate account that is linked to yours but that they cannot pull money out of. You’re not literally adding them to the exact same account.</p>