I remember many years ago an elementary school teacher telling us you could carve a pumpkin into a check and your bank would have to accept it. I think that’s a bit far fetched, but, you CAN legally make a check out of ANY piece of paper. Correct?
My question is, are their ANY restrictions on the size, weight, or medium of a check?
My high school Business Law teacher told us that a check written on some huge medium (the side of a cow or a big piece of boilerplate, for example) is a legal check. However, the bank has the right to charge a fee for handling the oversize check. By the way, a boatload of pennies or nickels may be refused as payment. Several cases of alimony and tax payment have established a precedent.
I thought legal tender was legal tender for all debts. Isn’t refusing cash illegal?
Annie, that’s a popular question here, a search should pull up several threads. The short answer is, while US currency is legal to pay any debt, no one is obligated to accept it.
I would look up the priors for you, but I’m in a bit of a hurry this morning.
I can’t give a cite, but believe all this nonsense of writing checks on odd objects is a thing of the past.
Twenty or thirty years ago I would see from time to time a news article showing a bank receiving a check written on a two by four or something. I haven’t notice anything like that in a very long time.
One hesitates to take issue with Cecil, even concerning a column written 19 years ago . . . but this just doesn’t pass the smell test:
It will? Sez who? And whose bank are we talking about, the customer’s bank or the merchant’s bank?
Call the customer’s bank Bank A and the merchant’s bank Bank B. The first thing that will happen is that the merchant will attempt to deposit the bogus check into Bank B. I find it hard to believe that the average Bank B would accept it. Just because the merchant decided to humor his buddies and accept off-the-wall checks doesn’t mean his bank has to play along.
In the unlikely event that it chooses to do so, Bank B will then process the check through a clearinghouse and eventually it will find its way to Bank A. Again, will the average Bank A honor it? Banks use preprinted checks for a reason—they’re standard size and shape, with information bar-coded onto the face to make automatic processing cheaper and easier. Is the average bank that desperate for low-margin checking accounts that they’ll humor customers who know friendly merchants willing to cash grocery lists and pumpkins?
Are there any business people or bankers out there who have real-world experience with this kind of nonsense?
How about the oversized checks you see all the time in photos of sweepstakes winners, charity contributions, etc. Are those checks actually given as legal tender, or are they replaced with standard sized checks for depositing in the bank? I’m pretty sure I already know the answer to this one, but I thought maybe someone with firsthand experience might chime in.
I don’t think the “writing checks on odd things and they will be accepted by the bank” is true any more. Checks must have the magnetic characters on them and I assume must be of uniform size for automatic processing.
“Service to the customer” now should be taken in the animal husbandry sense.
PS:
“I attended an agricultural college and practiced animal husbandry until they caught me at it.”
Tom Lehrer
Actually the new commercial with Andy Roddick carrying one of those huge checks onboard an airliner is what gave me the original idea for the OP. I think those “big” checks are just props for taking photographs. I wonder what they do with them after the pictures are taken? 
Isn’t it a requirement for the check to have that funky routing and account number on it to be legal?
ccwaterback, No.
I don’t doubt for a minute that a check without the account number and bar codes would be legal. If you, the party that you’re paying, and both of your banks agree to accept and cash it, then it’s legal. You couldn’t go back to your bank later and say, “Wait a minute, you were wrong to debit my account, because that wasn’t a valid check”. But I do doubt whether any bank would in fact agree to cash such a check, except perhaps as part of a pre-arranged publicity stunt.
I think you have to read the above link.
Summary; If the (payable to) party accepts the check as payment (with the least necessary amount of info - bank name, amount, etc. [see link]) then the bank cashing the check and the bank holding the funds will work out the details.
No.
"The law says that: “All coins and currencies of the United States, regardless of when coined or issued, shall be legal-tender for all debts, public and private, public charges, taxes, duties and dues.”
This statute means that all United States money as identified above are a valid and legal offer of payment for debts when tendered to a creditor. There is, however, no Federal statute mandating that a private business, a person or an organization must accept currency or coins as for payment for goods and/or services. Private businesses are free to develop their own policies on whether or not to accept cash unless there is a State law which says otherwise. For example, a bus line may prohibit payment of fares in pennies or dollar bills. In addition, movie theaters, convenience stores and gas stations may refuse to accept large denomination currency (usually notes above $20) as a matter of policy."
http://www.treas.gov/education/faq/currency/legal-tender.shtml
In most cases, cash is legal tender for all debts, public and private. However, there are exceptions. If you buy your daughter a new car with all the change you’ve saved since she was born, the car dealer will probably use the opportunity to get some free publicity. If you try to pay off your repair bill in loose pennies, as an eff-you to the plumbers, they can legally tell you to come back with paper money, or at least rolled coins. Also, you have probably seen signs at cash registers, “We cannot give change from a $50 bill.” That’s for the safety of the clerk. If you don’t have much cash in the till, you are less likely to be robbed. That’s legal, too. In those stores, if you buy $35 worth of goods, they’ll change a fifty, but they physically don’t have much money in the till. In a convenience store, a clerk can be fired for letting too much money accumulate in the cash register. They drop excess cash into a one-way “valve” in the safe. The clerk does not have a key.
I have <looks around> OK, *used *to have several giant-sized publicity photo checks made out to other people. I’m pretty sure they did get their money, though.
I read it, but I don’t believe it.
Somebody try it–write a hand-written check to your buddy, and have your buddy “accept” it (he trusts you, right?) and take it to his bank for deposit. One guess what will happen.
There’s also the case of the guy in California who cashed a “check” for $95,000 that was basically a junk mail flier. In his web page he talks about going to the law library and finding the nine rules for what constitutes a valid check. Unfortunately, he does not go into detail about what those nine criteria are, other than “basic stuff” like a signature, a “pay to” line. However, that story only really deals with the negotiability of a check if the words “non-negotiable” are written on it.
Bottom line, we should hear from someone who has access to Brady on Bank Checks: The Law of Bank Checks.
Here’s an entertaining, if not informative, quiz on negotiable instruments. I’ve yet to see any mention at all on the requirements of the form of a check or note, other than it must be “tangible.”