We recently received two checks drawn from my wife's father's estate & trust - one for $6k and another for $4k. Deposited them today at the Chase ATM.
Was then thinking about the TV shows where $10k is a trigger for "suspicious" activity.
Did some quick browsing, and found several messages like the one below. SO - will these Estate and Trust deposited checks for $10k cause a CTR or SAR ? If and when these are triggered, is there some local notification or just an end of year W9 ?
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If the deposit is in cash or cash-like instruments (cashier's checks, money orders, traveler's checks, 3rd party checks, etc.) a Cash (or Currency) Transaction Report (CTR) will be filed if you make a single deposit (or withdrawal) of $10k or more or make a series of deposits that add up to $10k or more over a "short period of time." The short period of time isn't defined by the law but anything less than 2 weeks generally would trigger a CTR.
If the deposit is in the form of a check drawn on the account of the person who gave you the check, no CTR is required regardless of the amount of the check. (A SAR may still be triggered, see below.)
Note that CTR reporting applies to all cash or cash-like transactions, not just bank deposits and withdrawals. If you withdrew $15,000 in cash from your bank and bought a car with it, that would trigger at least 3 CTRs -- one for the withdrawal, one for the purchase of the car (filed by the dealer) and one for the deposit made by the dealer to his bank.
If the transaction is deemed "suspicious" by your bank, a Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) will be filed by your bank. "Suspicious" is anything that is outside of your normal banking habits.
Banks use sophisticated software to flag transactions that are candidates for SAR or CTR reporting. While the flagged transactions are reviewed by a bank officer before the actual report is filed, banks tend to be conservative entities and default to filing the report if there is any question at all as to whether a report is required or not. From my experience in the banking industry, anything flagged as a CTR candidate was reported, while about 30% of the SAR candidates were eventually reported.