General Escrow Question

[Michael M.]

BP,

I'm nearing the date of when I'll be leasing out my property, and brushing up and finalizing my To-Do-List. In the state of NJ, the tenant's security deposit must be deposited in either:

1) Shares of an insured Money Market Fund.

2) Sate or Federally chartered bank, savings bank or savings and loan association.

Asides from this (from the NJ State Laws referred to above), I've consistently read suggestions to put security deposits into an escrow account, despite the word "escrow" not being in the NJ Law for tenant security deposits.

Now, Bank of America being the location of my current accounts, I had asked if they offered escrow services for security deposits and how to it should be executed, and requested all the information there is that a customer should know about their escrow accounts. I was told that there's no documentation but was suggested I needed to be a legal entity to do so, or be a title company, or via lawyer representation- all irrelevant to a simple tenant security deposit.

With that said, can't I just deposit their security deposit into a Savings Account like it says in the NJ law? If so, who's name goes on the account, the tenant's or mine?

Please explain this to me like I'm five years old because I know squat about this.

-Michael