If I try to deposit a post dated check at my bank, will they tell me to bring it back on the date of the check or will they deposit it and wait until the date to present it for payment?
In my experience, no one will check the date. They will just deposit the check immediately and send it off for processing.
Neither. They will process it as if it were dated that day.
Well then what’s the point of writing the date on a check?
The person writing the check hopes you will hold until that date.
Is a check valid if there’s no date written on it?
legally or in practice? Never once in my life have I EVER signed my name on the back of a check. I have never once not got the money or had anyone say anything or anything else.
In the memo part I write for sexual favors, or for drugs and that has never been a problem either. I assume the date does not matter either, it can just be written in and we all forget the date sometimes
I’ve had my tax return checks returned to me because they require the signiature of both my wife and I on the check, even though I was depositing it into a joint account with oth of our names on it.
As for dates, I was always taught that your check is cashable the moment you tear it out of the checkbook. Never write a check counting on a post-date or float.
So I don’t even need to sign it?
Actually, in the US, postdating does have some legal force, but only if the bank is explicitly notified. According to UCC 4-401 (c):
According to Wikipedia, this is not true in the UK. No idea about other jurisdictions.
Anyway, the real point of postdating is to remind the payee not to deposit the check before that date. And maybe to serve as evidence that the payee agreed to hold onto the check (so if they do deposit it early and it bounces, they can’t charge late fees), but I have no idea how much water that would hold if it came up.
My experience was like yours (above) until I moved to Canada. Here the date on the cheque is taken very, very seriously. The bank will take the cheque and physically hold it until the date written, at which point they’ll deposit it. I paid rent over the summer by giving the student I was subletting from postdated cheques. She left them with her banker while she was abroad, and they were deposited correctly. I required some convincing from the banker before I was willing to do this!
Legally, you do need to sign it. Banks will sometimes process it anyway if no one notices.
Same with the date. It is required, but if the bank doesn’t look for it, the check will be processed, even though technically, they are not supposed to.
I’m pretty sure both of these things also vary with the jurisdiction. Some require signatures, some allow banks to require signatures if they want, some allow payees to require signatures, etc. I’d be willing to bet that the only things that are universally required are drawer’s name, drawer’s institution, payee’s name, and amount.
Still, signatures are a good idea. If someone steals or forges a check against your account, you’ve probably got a better case if you can say, “That’s not my signature–look at the other 117 checks I wrote last year.”
Banks will sometimes pay attention to dates. I once had a teller get manager approval before taking a check because I had written the date dd/mm/yy instead of mm/dd/yy.
They didn’t for my sister. But the bank did refund her half the money when she reported that the company was supposed to hold on to it, and wound up getting her money paid back from the company itself.
Indeed. I had a colleague who came to the US from the UK. So he would not have to remember to make his mortgage payment every month, he sent the mortgage company 12 checks, one dated each month. This did not have the effect he intended…
I live in Canada and at my work I sometimes write a dozen checks per day, most of them post-dated. I agree that in Canada the date is taken seriously and am surprised to hear that it doesn’t really mean anything elsewhere. I had always assumed that the date was legally binding. Our cash flow is based on those post dates and we wouldn’t function as a business if they weren’t followed.
Many businesses have rubber stamps that say something like “Absence of signature guaranteed” that they stamp on checks without signatures. Basically, they are saying that the business guarantees that the payee owes them this money, and that the business will reimburse the bank if they cash the check and the payee then stops payment.
Real life anecdote - several years ago, my brother was curious as to whether his bank (major US bank) actually checked the signature on his checks. He wrote a rent check and signed a fictitious name on the signature line which didn’t match any form of his legal name, and neither the landlord nor the bank apparently batted an eye, and it all went through.
Of course, I’ve been known to predate checks far more often than postdate them. Reasons:
1 - I can’t remember today’s date, so I enter a date I know we’re past. Like last week.
2 - A feeble attempt to make it look like I’m not paying this bill 2 days late. Yeah, I know it doesn’t do a bit of good.
Of course, I don’t write nearly as many checks these days with online banking. And they don’t creep past the due date, either because they get scheduled to be payed when due, with maximum float.