Your Safe Deposit Box Isn’t the Impenetrable Vault You Think It Is
22nd November 2023
In the movies, safe deposit boxes are magic: Located in bank vaults, they’re depicted as the most secure things in the universe. Thieves targeting safe deposit boxes must plan for decades and bring in dozens of experts. If a character wants to keep something absolutely safe (whether it’s jewels or important documents), they stick it in a safe deposit box and no force in the universe can disturb it.
Unfortunately, that isn’t actually true. Safe deposit boxes aren’t very safe; banks increasingly regard them as more trouble than they’re worth, and they’re not well-regulated. There are exactly zero federal laws covering safe deposit boxes, and they largely operate in the murky world of lease agreements. And if you actually read the (probably very brief) rental agreement you sign with the bank, you’d likely discover that the bank has restricted its liability to a ridiculous level.
Most surprisingly, according to the Office of Comptroller of Currency (OCC) your bank can “drill” your safe deposit box open (removing the contents) under a wide range of conditions, including court orders and search warrants, failure to pay fees, because of branch closure—or because the bank messes up their records. So if you have a safe deposit box and it gets drilled, what can you do?
Notice the question on your Federal tax return about whether you have a safety deposit box, which (if you answer honestly) tells them that there is something there to drill for.