Talk about a stale check....

[ziggy29]

So this morning I was downloading some Quicken transactions and I see that the process flagged a seldom used checking account at my credit union. Surprised to see any activity there, I went to their web site to see if maybe there was some data entry error which debited our account for someone else's check. (That happened to us before at another institution.)

But when I looked there, it was indeed a check my wife wrote, for about $26.

On February 2, 2007. More than three years ago.

Technically I could probably make a stink about this. But it was written to a friend of my wife's who may have just misplaced and/or forgotten about it, and I know she needs that money a lot more than we do.

Still, I hope the banks would waive any overdrawn fees they charge if something this caused someone to become overdrawn...

 

[W2R]

I don't know if personal checks have an implicit "lifetime" or not. Business checks often are imprinted with verbiage stating that they are invalid after 90 days.

She probably threw it in a heap of papers, and found it two years later when doing some spring cleaning. I laugh because that is such a human thing to do. Still, it would have been pretty inconvenient for you if it had bounced.

 

[ziggy29]

I don't know if personal checks have an implicit "lifetime" or not. Business checks often are imprinted with verbiage stating that they are invalid after 90 days.

I did some looking around to find the answers. It *sounds* like the bank the check is drawn on has the discretion (but not the obligation) to dishonor or bounce a stale-dated check (more than six months old).

And if the bank chooses to pay it out, it has the legal right to do so indefinitely as long as there is no valid stop payment on it.