It’s illegal to post-date a check
Well, you learn something every day.
My landlord hasn’t set themselves up to accept debit or credit card payments, and only takes checks. I had to get my rent check to them before I left the US for Christmas, so just mailed a check dated 01/01/08. I was dismayed when the check cleared on 27 December, just because of the incompetency and apathy it indicated (luckily, I had plenty of cash in the account). “How can they not even look at the date?” I wondered. I was cross with both my bank and my landlord.
I just got off the phone with Fifth Third, who told me it is illegal to post-date a check, and that it is at the discretion of the check recipient when they cash it. Huh. Good to know. Now I just have to ream my landlord.
Filed under: Life
Eh, 5/3 will take anything whether there is cash in your account or not. They would also take 1/1/07, I bet. And good luck with the landlord. Other buildings seem to have a much better experience than I did.
Hm. Last week I wrote a paycheck for an employee and wrote “07″ accidentally, realized my mistake, and changed it to an “08″. A few days later I got a call from him - the bank refused to honor it because of that. I thought that was odd, considering that I have had to change the date on checks I write for, oh, the first two weeks of any given year.
I was very surprised to learn in law school how banks actually run - for the most part, checks are machine read and discrepancies in dates, signatures, etc. can go right on through the system the majority of the time. You could sign a check from your account “Mortimer J. Snerd” and often (mostly?) it would go through the system just fine. Which is why we all have to review our bank account records to make sure that nothing was diverted, mis-entered, etc. The bank is liable for allowing forgery (on the theory that they should know your signature) but you have the responsibility of actually reviewing your account and catching issues the machine scanner won’t.
Life experience note here- beware of taking or giving any check where the numeral number and written number don’t match. The case I saw was a check written for $3500.00 (correct) where the payor hand-wrote “thirty five thousand” instead of “thirty five hundred” - the bank indicated that given the discrepancy they would probably go with the hand written (35,000.00) number over the numerals. So hand write clearly and accurately and be careful! Never use “thirty five hundred” when you can use the clearer and more obvious “three thousand five hundred.”
I am a font of largely useless minutia and trivia but today, today I had something to offer.
Perhaps the person at 5/3 was confused?
As far as I know, it’s not illegal to post-date a check (though this may vary by state), but it is illegal to float one, which is a common reason to post-date.
(Floating being to write a check that can’t be covered at the time of writing, that in theory will be when it’s cashed.)