Land Trust Banking Questions

[Michael Sholtis]

Details: I am buying a building with a partner. I am using my self-directed IRA to purchase my half. We plan on taking the property in trust where he and my IRA are the beneficiaries and our trustee is just a mutual friend who just kinda agreed to do it. My partner the other beneficiary plans to manage the building as well as live and work there. My partner the other beneficiary will be made the "managing beneficiary" in the agreement. The building needs pretty extensively overhauled but my partner is very handy and plans on doing major projects for the building. We will need to run an active bank account to handle the repairs and the needs of the building. It is also kind of critical he keeps his name off any accounts for the next year until his divorce is final. Being the beneficial interest is not a problem for him just holding an account solely in his name is. An LLC could solve quite a bit of this but he already has enough on his plate and really neither of us want to deal with an LLC on top of all this...

So...

We would like to take the rent funds in the name of the trust in a bank account and draft checks etc for the building as well.

My question is how to set up a bank account for a land trust and is anyone using a bank familiar with land trusts? Without using a management company, how do we take funds in the trust, get an account etc? 

The local banks had no clue and wanted a Tax ID number and had never seen a land trust agreement. I have a # from my IRA but i am pretty sure they are wanting the trust to have a Tax ID. Anyway I am trying to find anything to help educate me to help educate a local bank or work with a bank familiar with land trusts.

Thanks in advance,

Michael