CLIENT TRUST ACCOUNTING
FOR DELAWARE ATTORNEYS
(Revised 11/23/98)

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This handbook is intended as a tool to help every Delaware attorney fulfill his or her ethical obligations to clients whose money and other properties they hold in trust. Even if you never hold money or other properties for clients, it’s imperative that you understand these obligations. Your license may depend on it.

We assume that you know very little about client trust accounting, so this handbook is devoted to informing you of the basics necessary for you to properly account for your clients' money. It will explain the rules governing your client trust accounting duties, the concepts behind client trust accounting, and a simple step-by-step system for accounting for your clients’ money.

THE IMPORTANCE OF CLIENT TRUST ACCOUNTING

If you died suddenly, would your clients – or the executors who have to answer to your clients – be able to tell how much of the money in your various professional accounts belonged to each client? If an auditor asked you to account for a particular client’s money, would you be able to? Would they find complete, systematic, up-to-date records showing what’s been received and paid out for each client, or would they find a random assortment of cancelled checks, unopened bank statements, and checkbook registers full of cryptic notations and rounded-off figures? In these situations, the fact that you "have it all in your head" isn't going to help your clients find their money.

Whether you find it easy or difficult, the fact is that if you agree to hold money in trust, you take on a non-delegable, personal fiduciary responsibility to account for every penny as long as the funds remain in your possession. No matter whom you hire to do your books or fill out your deposit slips, you have full responsibility for his or her actions when you receive money in trust. This responsibility can’t be transferred, and it isn't excused by ignorance, inattention, incompetence or dishonesty by you, your employees or your associates. The legal and ethical obligation to account for those monies is yours and yours alone, regardless of how busy your practice is or how hopeless you are with numbers. You may employ others to help you fulfill this duty, but if you do you must provide adequate training and supervision. Failure to live up to this responsibility can result in personal monetary liability, fee disputes, loss of clients and public discipline.

The essence of client trust accounting is contained in these three words:

Client – These duties arise in the context of an attorney-client relationship, regardless of whether you are paid for your services, and are as inviolable as your duty to maintain client confidences. These duties may also be owed to third parties.

Trust – The willingness of people to trust a complete stranger with money, just because the stranger is an attorney, is a fundamental aspect of the attorney-client relationship, and maintaining that trust is the duty of every individual attorney and a matter of supreme public interest.

Accounting – The way to fulfill your clients’ trust is to be able at any time to make a full and accurate accounting of all money you’ve received, held and paid out on their behalf.

That’s all "client trust accounting" means. If you follow the simple procedures explained below, you will never have to worry about failing to live up to your duties as a fiduciary no matter how complex or busy your practice.

THE RULES

Rule 1.15 of the Delaware Lawyers' Rules of Professional Conduct relates to handling trust money, fees, and financial transactions with clients. The whole point of these rules – and client trust accounting – is to make sure you know exactly how much of the money you are holding for clients belongs to each individual client.

Imagine how you’d feel if you asked your bank how much money was in your personal account, and they explained that they couldn't tell you because business was booming and keeping exact records of so much money for so many people would just take too much time. You’d probably feel that if knowing how much of your money they have is too much trouble, the bank shouldn't be holding your money. That’s exactly how your clients feel about you. You keep records so you can give your clients an accounting of their money; failing to do so is a violation of your professional responsibilities. Keeping track of exactly what’s happening with a client’s money is your personal, nondelegable ethical responsibility. The minute you don’t keep track, you are in violation of the client trust accounting rules.

And don’t think if you keep enough of your own money in the client trust bank account that everything’s alright. Not only does that not satisfy your professional responsibility to your clients, it constitutes an additional violation known as "commingling." In short, the only adequate way to fulfill your fiduciary responsibility to your clients is to keep track of, at all times, how much of their money you have in your client trust bank account.

Maintaining a pooled client trust bank account in which the funds of more than one client are held is fine, as long as you keep an accurate record of what belongs to each client. That’s what client trust accounting is all about.

RULES REGULATING TRUST ACCOUNTS

* All funds you receive from or hold for a client must be deposited into a bank account that is clearly labeled as an attorney trust account or a clearly identifiable fiduciary title.

* Whenever you receive money or other property on behalf of a client, you have to promptly notify that client of that fact.

* You cannot keep any money belonging to you or your law firm (other than money necessary to cover bank charges, up to $500) in any of your client trust bank accounts. Holding your own funds, in excess of this $500 maximum is commingling. That also means that when you’re holding client money that includes your fees, you have to take those fees out of the client trust bank account as you earn them. It’s not a matter of your convenience; you are ethically required to withdraw your money from that account without delay. Failure to remove your fees from the account on a timely basis is also commingling.

* Money held in a client trust bank account becomes yours when earned, but you can’t withdraw any fees that the client disputes. As far as you’re concerned, from the moment a client disputes your fee, that money is frozen in the client trust bank account until the fee dispute is resolved. As soon as your interest becomes fixed and is not in dispute, you are obligated to withdraw that money promptly from the client trust bank account. If you have withdrawn fees that the client later disputes, you should redeposit the disputed funds into the client trust bank account until the dispute is resolved.

* When clients ask you how much money you’re holding for them or what you’ve done with the money while you’ve had it, you must tell them.

* For at least five years after you disburse them, you have to keep complete records of all client money, securities or other properties that are entrusted to you.

RECORDKEEPING

Client Ledger. This is a ledger for each client that details every cash transaction on behalf of that client. If you have a pooled client trust bank account in which the funds of more than one client are deposited, this is where you keep track of individual clients’ money. (The same type of record is required for bank accounts for individual clients.)

Receipts and Disbursements Journals. This is a journal for each client trust bank account. This is where you keep track of the money going in and out of a client trust bank account. When you have a bank account that’s designated solely for one client’s money, the account journal will be identical to the client ledger.

Bank Statements, Deposit Slips and Cancelled Checks. You must keep all bank statements, deposit slips and cancelled checks for each client trust bank account, individual or pooled. These records show that the entries in your client ledger and account journal are accurate.

Client Balance Listing. At the end of each month, from the client ledger, you must produce a listing showing each client's name and the balance due each client. The listing must have a total which shows the total amount due to all clients.

Reconciliation/Comparison. You must keep a record showing that every month you "reconciled" or balanced each client trust bank account and the balance in the bank agreed with the total of the client balance listing.

Journal of Other Properties. You must keep complete records of all securities or other properties you hold in trust for clients that explains what you are holding, who you are holding it for, when you received it, when you distributed it, and who you distributed it to.

Client Trust Bank Account Used Exclusively For Real Estate Settlements. Cash receipts and disbursement journals and client ledgers are not required. However, if any client or third party funds remain in the account, they must be listed by client and the total of the listing must agree with the balance in the bank.

DUTIES TO THIRD PARTIES

In some circumstances, you have the same duties to third parties as you have to your clients for money you have received and paid out in the context of an attorney-client relationship. An attorney who receives money on behalf of a party who is not the attorney’s client becomes a fiduciary to the party. Where an attorney assumes the responsibility to disburse funds as agreed by the parties in an action, the attorney owes an obligation to the party who is not the attorney’s client to ensure compliance with the terms of the agreement. If there is a dispute between the client and the third party, the attorney must retain the funds in trust until the resolution of the dispute.

An attorney’s duty does not end with payment to the client of the client’s ultimate share of the recovery. The attorney has an ongoing fiduciary duty to the client to hold in trust the remaining settlement funds subject to further directions from the client regarding disbursement.

KEY CONCEPTS IN CLIENT TRUST ACCOUNTING

The following key concepts are all the background you need in order to understand your client trust accounting responsibilities.

Client A’s money has nothing to do with Client B’s money. Even when you keep them in a pooled client trust bank account, each client’s funds are completely separate from those of all your other clients. In other words, you are NEVER allowed to use one client’s money to pay either another client’s or your own obligations.

The most direct way to keep one client’s money separate from another’s would be to create individual bank accounts for each client. But in most private law practices, this is impractical. Most attorneys keep many clients’ money in one pooled client trust bank account.

When you keep your clients’ money in a pooled client trust bank account, the way to distinguish one client’s money from another’s is to keep a client ledger card (in a manual system) of each individual client’s funds. The ledger card tells you how much money you’ve received on behalf of each client, how much money you’ve paid out on behalf of each client, and how much money each client has left in your pooled client trust bank account. If you are holding money in your common client trust bank account for 10 clients, you have to maintain 10 separate client ledgers. If you keep each client’s ledger properly, you will always know exactly how much of the money in your common client trust bank account belongs to each client. If you don’t, you will lose track of how much money each client has, and when you make payments out of your client trust bank account, you won’t know which client’s money you are using. (A computer system will keep track of each client's funds automatically.)

Each client has only his or her own funds available to cover their expenses, no matter how much money belonging to other clients is in your pooled client trust bank account. Your common client trust bank account might have a balance of $100,000, but if you are only holding $10.00 for a certain client, you can’t write a check for $10.50 on behalf of that client without using some other client’s money.

The following example graphically illustrates this concept. Assume you are holding a total of $5,000 for four clients in your client trust bank account as follows:

If you write a check for $1,500 from the client trust bank account for Client D, $1,000 of that check is going to be paid for by Clients A, B and C. The funds you are holding in trust for them are being used for Client D’s expenses. You should have a total of $4,500 for Clients A, B and C, but you only have $3,500 left in the trust account.

Even though improper, it’s not uncommon in personal checkbooks for people to write checks against money they haven’t deposited yet or money deposited that is uncollected, and show this as a negative balance. In client trust accounting, there should never be a negative balance. A negative balance is at best a sign of negligence and, at worst, a sign of theft. (Don’t think that because you have "automatic overdraft protection" on your client trust bank account and the check doesn't bounce, you have fulfilled your client trust bank account responsibilities.) In client trust accounting, there are only three possibilities:

You have a positive balance (while you are holding money for a client);

You have a zero balance (when all the client’s money has been paid out); or

You have a negative balance less than zero and a problem.

Rule 1.15(d)(9)(c) states, "No funds disbursed for a client or third party must be in excess of funds received from that client or third party. If, however, through error, funds disbursed for a client or third party exceeds funds received from that client or third party, the lawyer shall transfer funds from the non-fiduciary account in a timely manner to cover the excess disbursement." So, as soon as you recognize that an excess disbursement has occurred, even though it may not have created a negative balance, make an immediate transfer into the trust account to cover the excess disbursement. You may have paid a client too much but, don't wait until you recover from the client.

Rule 1.15 states that "A lawyer shall not disburse fiduciary funds from his or her client trust account(s) unless the funds deposited in the account to be disbursed are good funds as hereafter defined. "Good funds" shall mean:

If you have any doubt whether or not you are disbursing "good funds", contact your bank.

If a computer trust accounting system is set up properly, every time you make a deposit or issue a check on behalf of a client, the transaction is recorded in the client's account. The client's balance is increased when a deposit is made and decreased when a check is issued. However, you should recognize that a transaction can be entered incorrectly. If the amount is entered incorrectly, it should be found when you balance your bank statement and compare that balance to the total client balance. If a transaction is entered to the wrong client account, it won't affect the total client balance. It is advisable that attorneys review client accounts at the end of each month, after reconciling, to make sure each client balance is correct. Also, this monthly review should alert you to any client balances that should have been disbursed, but weren't.

Since "you can’t spend what you don’t have" (see Key Concept 2), you should check the balance in the client’s account before you issue any client trust bank account checks for that client. That way, if your records are accurate and up-to-date, you won't pay out more money than the client has in the account.

The goal in client trust accounting is to make sure that every dollar you receive on behalf of a client is ultimately paid out. What comes in for each client must equal what goes out for that client; no more, no less.

Many attorneys have small, inactive balances in their client trust bank accounts. Sometimes these balances are the result of a mathematical error or sometimes they are part of a fee you forgot to take. Also, a client balance may show zero but, a check you wrote never cleared or wasn't cashed, so the money is still in the bank balance.

Whatever the reason, as long as the money is in your client trust bank account, you are responsible for it. The longer these funds stay in the bank, the harder it is to account for them. Therefore, you should take care of those small, inactive balances as soon as possible, including, if necessary, following up with payees to find out why a check hasn't cleared.

If you have made a good faith effort to locate the client or third party and are still unable to pay out the funds, and the client balance is at least five years old, the unclaimed monies escheat to the state.

An "audit trail" is the series of bank-created records, like cancelled checks, bank statements, etc., that make it possible to trace what happened to the money you handled. An audit trail should start whenever you receive funds on behalf of a client and should continue through the final check you issue against them. Without an audit trail, you have no way to show that you have taken proper care of your clients’ money, or to explain what you did with the money if any questions come up. The audit trail is also an important tool for tracking down accounting errors. If you don’t maintain an audit trail, you will find it hard to correct the small mistakes, like errors in addition or subtraction, and the big mistakes, like miscredited deposits, that can happen when you handle money.

The key to making a good audit trail is being descriptive. Let’s say you are filling out a deposit slip for five checks relating to three separate clients. All the bank requires you to do is write in the bank identification code for each check and the check amounts. This doesn't identify which client the money belongs to. If you include the name of the client and keep a copy or make a duplicate, you will know which client the check was for, which is the purpose of an audit trail. That will make it easy to answer any questions that come up, even years later.

By the same token, every check you write from your client trust bank account should indicate which client it’s being written for, so that it’s easy to match up the money with the client. That means you should NEVER make out a client trust bank account bank check to cash, because there’s no way to know later who actually cashed the check. If you are handling more than one case for the client, indicate which matter the payments and receipts relate to on your checks and deposit slips.

Money or other property entrusted to an attorney for a specific purpose, including advances for costs and expenses, is held in trust and must be applied only to that purpose.

In other words, whenever you receive or hold money for clients – or any other persons with whom you have a fiduciary relationship – you have to deposit the money into a specifically labeled client trust bank account. As we detail below, client trust bank accounts are a special kind of bank account. Bankers who have experience with them can help you set up and administer your client trust bank account properly. When you first open the account, make sure the bankers you’re dealing with know what a client trust bank account is; if they don’t, ask to work with someone else.

Client trust accounts:

SHOULD TRUST ACCOUNTS BE INTEREST-EARNING?

Client funds fall into one or two categories:

Large and/or long-term: The attorney has a fiduciary obligation to hold these funds in separate interest-earning accounts for the benefit of the client.

Small and/or short-term: Any income these funds would generate would be negligible and not warrant the setting up of separate client accounts or the administrative cost required to keep track of and credit the income to each client.

Rule 1.15(f) makes clear, with respect to interest earned on client funds that "the lawyer shall have no right or claim to such interest."

IOLTA ACCOUNTS

When a client gives you a "nominal" amount of money, or you will be holding a client’s money for a "short period of time," Rule 1.15(g) states that these funds shall be maintained in a "pooled interest-bearing depository account" which is set up so that the interest the account earns will be paid to the IOLTA program administered by the Delaware Bar Foundation.

The idea behind the Delaware Bar Foundation is that attorneys often hold amounts of money for clients that are so small or will be held for such short periods of time that the interest the money could earn for the client if it were held in a separate interest-bearing account for that client would be less than the cost involved in earning or accounting for the interest. However, when these amounts of money are held in a pooled client trust bank account, they collectively can generate substantial interest. The Delaware Bar requires that this aggregate interest, which would otherwise benefit only the bank, is used to ensure that poor Delawarians have access to legal services.

WHAT MUST GO INTO YOUR CLIENT TRUST BANK ACCOUNT

Rule 1.15(a) states, "A lawyer shall hold property of clients or third persons that is in a lawyer's possession in connection with a representation separate from the lawyer's own property." Here's some specific examples:

WHAT CAN'T GO INTO YOUR CLIENT TRUST BANK ACCOUNT

Other than bank service charge money, no funds that belong to the member or the law firm can be deposited into your client trust bank account. Unless one of your clients has an interest in the money, keep it out of your client trust bank account. NEVER put your personal or office money, including funds like employee payroll taxes, into your client trust bank account. Employee tax withholdings are trust funds, but they are not client funds and, therefore, should not be put into the client trust fund account.

PAYING MONEY OUT OF YOUR CLIENT TRUST BANK ACCOUNT

Before you write your first client trust bank account check, there are things you should know.

You can make any payments on behalf of your client out of your client trust bank account, including paying client costs and expenses (e.g., court filing fees or deposition transcript costs), disbursing settlement proceeds, paying yourself earned and undisputed legal fees, etc. You may also pay bank charges for the account only from the funds you have placed in the account for this purpose. These are the only payments you are allowed to make out of your client trust bank account.

Bank charges. For individual client trust bank accounts, paying bank charges is simple: since all of the charges are incurred for the client for whom you have the account, you can pay the charges out of that client’s money.

For pooled client trust bank accounts, paying bank charges is a little more complicated. When the bank charges for a service (e.g., for wiring money) for a specific client, you can treat the charge as you would any other cost and pay for it out of money you are holding for that client in the account. But some charges, like printing checks, aren't specific to a certain client. Like all your other general operating expenses, you – not your clients – have to pay these charges. Therefore, a nominal amount of your money (no more than $500) may be kept to cover bank charges.

You can’t make payments out of your client trust bank account to cover your own expenses, personal or business, or for any other purpose that isn't directly related to carrying out your duties to an individual client. You also can’t pay money out of your client trust bank account on behalf of a client if the client doesn't have money available in the account to cover those payments. Remember the final score is always zero. Check the account balance before disbursement to be sure.

RECORDKEEPING

Rule 1.15 does not mandate any particular client trust accounting system. Paragraph (d) states, "A lawyer engaged in the private practice of law must maintain financial books and records on a current basis." As long as you get the results and keep the records that the Rule requires, you are in compliance.

Even though it's more time-consuming and inefficient, you can use a manual system. Every check and every deposit transaction would have to be recorded twice, once in cash receipt and cash disbursement journals and, then, in client ledgers. In addition, in a manual system, monthly journal and ledger totals have to be added and balanced. But if you use the right computer software, set it up properly, review the results each month and make adjustments on a timely basis, you should always be in compliance with those related recordkeeping requirements. With a computer system, particularly if you print checks on the computer, you only enter transactions once and the computer does all the rest automatically - totals monthly journals, posts to client accounts and reconciles the bank statement to the check register (this last procedure requires the input of cleared checks and deposits). And, the balance in the client trust bank account should always agree with the total owed to clients.

If you're in the process of selecting a computer system for your law office and have any questions, call the office of the Lawyers' Fund For Client Protection, (302)577-7034, and ask to speak to the Auditor.

Rule 1.15(d) requires you to keep trust accounting records for five years after you pay out the money the records refer to. To be on the safe side, you should keep the records of all money you handled for a client for a minimum of five years after you closed that client’s case, unless they relate to a matter under disciplinary investigation. In that case, you must retain the records until the investigation is concluded.

If you have a practice involving a lot of clients, you have to hold on to a lot of paper. Since office space is limited and expensive, you may find it makes more sense to keep some client trust accounting records off-site rather than in your office. That’s OK, as long as you can produce the records within a reasonable time after receiving notice that you’re the subject of a disciplinary inquiry. If you keep orderly files, label each box with the names of the client trust bank accounts the records apply to and the dates covered by the records, and keep an index listing the names of all the boxes you send into storage, this won’t be a problem. If you don’t, you’re going to have to retrieve all the boxes from storage and sort through all the records they contain in order to respond to the disciplinary inquiry. This can be expensive, time-consuming, and, if you have to request a time extension, can create the wrong impression.

Even if you have a computerized accounting system, you still have to keep hard copies of all the records required by the Rule, including bank-created records (Rule 1.15(d)(10)). You can use computer printouts instead of handwritten ledgers for the records you are responsible for creating, but just having the data on a disk is not acceptable. (It’s a good idea to have these printouts dated and signed by the preparer to show when and by whom they were generated.)

If you’re using a computerized accounting system, you should remember that computer data can be lost through natural disaster, like fire, power or equipment failure and human error. For your own protection, make hard copies regularly and have all your computer records regularly backed up onto disks.

Rule 1.15 requires you to keep two kinds of bank-created records: client trust bank account statements and cancelled checks. Some attorneys don’t take their duty to keep bank-created records seriously because they can always get copies from their bank. This is a clear violation of Rule 1.15. If your bank fails, merges with or is taken over by another bank, you may find that copies of your four-year-old cancelled client trust bank account checks just aren't available. In addition, some banks no longer routinely provide cancelled checks to customers. Be sure that the bank in which your client trust bank account is located provides you with cancelled checks.

You must also keep your client trust bank account deposit slips and checkbook stubs (unless you're using computer checks) so you will have a complete audit trail. These records will make it much easier to balance your books and to show what you did with your clients’ money.

MONTHLY RECONCILIATION

Rule 1.15(d)(8) requires the following three end-of -month trust accounting procedures:

1) The client trust bank account must be reconciled to the check register balance using the format illustrated below or an equivalent format.

The detail of each deposit in transit should indicate the date and amount. The detail of each outstanding check should be identified by date, check number, payee and amount.

Rule 1.15(d)(7) discusses the requirement to balance monthly cash transactions to the ending check register balance. This only relates to a manual system in which cash receipts and cash disbursements totals are derived separately and a control procedure is necessary to ensure that the end-of-month cash balance agrees with the beginning cash balance plus cash receipts minus cash disbursements for the month. This control procedure is not necessary in a manual system if a general ledger is maintained and a cash account balance is part of a trial balance. The control procedure is also not necessary in a computer system because cash transactions are only entered once. In a manual one-write system, deposits and checks are entered once; however, journal and ledger totals are manually calculated, so the control procedure is necessary.

2) From the client ledger cards, in a manual system, create a list after the last transaction for a calendar month has been recorded and end-of-month client balances have been calculated. Write down the ending balance held for each client as follows:

In a computer system, print a summary listing that shows each client balance and the total.

The listing must be done every month, it cannot be an adding machine tape and it must be retained as part of your permanent records. It's part of your audit trail, not just if you're audited, but for your own internal control. If you, the client, executor, auditor or anyone else ever questions a balance, you'll have the documentation necessary to support your record of the client transactions and the ending balance.

3) The total of the listing of client balances total should then be compared with the reconciled bank balance. The two should be the same; if not, (in a manual system) check the additions and subtractions on both the ledger cards and the journals. Make sure that transactions for the next month are not included in what you are trying to balance and that checks and deposits are recorded in both places. In a computer system, check any unusual transactions. For example, there may be an adjustment to a client's account that does not affect the cash balance. Remember, client accounts should only reflect cash balances.

After making sure there are no calculation or posting entry errors, you may have an overage or shortage variance. If the reconciled cash balance is greater than the total of client funds, there is an overage, and the assumption is, unless proven otherwise, that the overage represents unidentified client funds. If this situation exists, an effort must be made to immediately identify these funds so that they can be returned to the clients or third parties. If the reconciled cash balance is less than the total of client funds, there is a shortage and a deposit to the trust account must be made immediately to cover this shortage.

REAL ESTATE TRUST ACCOUNT

The above three end-of -month trust accounting procedures are also required for a client bank account used exclusively for real estate transactions when there is positive reconciled bank balance indicating that not all client funds received have been disbursed. There is one exception. If a bank account is used exclusively for real estate settlement transactions, cash receipts and disbursement journals are not required; therefore, the control procedure noted under Monthly Reconciliation (1) is not required.

THE CERTIFICATE OF COMPLIANCE

Every year, all Delaware lawyers have to complete a Certificate of Compliance, which is included with the Annual Registration Statement filed with the Supreme Court. All of the significant recordkeeping provisions in rule 1.15 (and many of the procedures in this handbook) are contained on the Certificate of Compliance. If a lawyer can't respond in the affirmative, indicating that he or she is adhering to each provision, then the lawyers faces a compliance audit and possible disciplinary action for a violation of the Rules of Professional Conduct.

RULE 1.15 COMMENT

The Comment defines the terms used in the Rule. Lawyers should review this section in conjunction with reading this handbook. It will help lawyers, secretaries and office assistants involved in trust account recordkeeping understand the bookkeeping terms used in the Rule, which should lead to more effective compliance.

QUESTIONS OR PROBLEMS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

THE LAWYERS' FUND FOR CLIENT PROTECTION of the Bar of Delaware gratefully acknowledges to The Florida Bar the use of the Handbook On Client Trust Accounting For Florida Attorneys, a publication of The Florida Bar, which served as a basis for this handbook. Also, we acknowledge to the State Bar of California whose exhaustive book on client trust accounting and Attorney Ethics of the Supreme Court of New Jersey was used by The Florida Bar. Although the client trust accounting rules in Delaware may differ from those in Florida, California and New Jersey, the same basic principles of accounting apply. Portions of this handbook are copyrighted by the State Bar of California and used with their permission.

Lawyers' Fund for Client Protection of the Bar of Delaware
200 West Ninth Street, Suite 300-B, Wilmington, DE 19801
Phone: (302) 577-7034 * Fax: (302) 577-1006 * E-mail: Bunny.James@state.de.us