I got a parking ticket today and when I went to pay it the peson behind the counter got a police sergeant to look at it. He read my commentary of the community in the memo field and said they would not accept the check as written because the comment defaced the check.
He also said they wouldn’t accept it because the signature was illegible. That point is kind of moot since that is my legal signature and I can prove that.
The memo did not include and swear words or racial epitaphs.
Thanks,
Rob
You know you’ve got to tell us what it said, right?
I’ve written lots of checks with amusing (to me) things in the memo field: “For sexual favors” being the classic. I was fairly fond of “Black magic rendered”, as well.
Never had a problem getting them accepted or cashed.
If signatures needed to be legible to be valid, the entire health care industry would instantaneously collapse.
My own signature doesn’t even contain any easily recognizable letters.
One time in college I wrote “for butt sex” in the memo field when I paid my share of rent to my roommate.
Butt sex is always funny.
The bottom line is that no one has to accept payment in a form that pisses them off.
What if cash pisses me off?
He’s wrong about ‘defacing’ the check. Defacing applies to legal currency, not checks (which are really just a written promise to pay).
But he’s right in that they don’t have to accept a check. They can refuse for any reason they want, or for no reason at all. (Though refusing to accept checks from one race, creed, color, gender, etc. would get them in trouble.)
Take the check to your bank, ask for that amount in pennies. Take them all out of the rolls and dump them in a big bag. Haul that into the police, and use it to pay your fine. It is US currency, “valid for all debts, public and private”, as it says on every dollar bill.
And ask for a receipt.
Since this is GQ and I’m on my best behavior, I’ll just point out that you mean epithets.
That’s not really true. Lots of places like retail stores restrict the types of payment that they will accept like no personal checks or large bills. However, they can do that because you don’t have an actual debt to them and they don’t have to sell anything to you at all. It is different when it comes to parties that you have an outstanding debt towards. Checking law is both archaic and precise and there are lots of stories centered around it including at least one column by The Master Himself. I won’t go out on a limb a comment on this specific case but, if you mailed your credit card company a scrawled but technically valid check or a wad of $2 bills then they have to accept that because you offered valid payment that met their terms.
He could have mean epitaphs, if a race had died out and needed a nice-looking tombstone for the mass grave. The Neanderthal race, for example, could likely use an epitaph.
Are (were) they a race or a separate species?
I suspect you’re kidding, but…
Long, long ago a guy at DMV wouldnt take cash (in the hundreds of $). He insisted
on a certified (I think) check because he didn’t have a proper safe.
So like a fucking dummy, I went to a bank and got one.
I should have told him he either accept the cash or I’ll call a Treasury office and report him. Like it says on our folding money:
**
This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private.
**
As **Shagnasty **said, this was probably allowable. If you didn’t have a debt, but rather were attempting to make a sale, then your cash can be denied. If you had already incurred the debt (for example, if after your leaving, they would have sent you a bill in the mail, indicating that they recognized you owed them money), THEN you could go back and insist on them taking cash. But if it was a matter of offering them cash for an item (like a driver’s license) that you did not yet have in your possession, then it wasn’t a debt, and they can stipulate what form of payment they’d take.
Stupid, I know. But there it is.
I don’t know if a parking ticket is considered a debt or not…
IIRC, it was the fee for registering my car.
What if you write “void” in the memo section?
If you are selling something or if someone owes you money, you are free to specify the form of payment. You are not obligated to accept cash.
(1) It doesn’t say that on pennies.
(2) Even if it did, they could still refuse it. If they don’t want to accept $10,000 in $1 bills then they can specify some other form of payment.
The Treasury Department would have laughed at you. They don’t have to accept a mountain of cash. They can make you bring a cashier’s check.
Yes, they can refuse. E.g. if you show up with $1M cash to buy a house you’re going to get questions because they’ll think you’re a drug dealer.
Also, tangentially, I notice at 7-11s where ppl get money orders, they’ve imposed some sort of limit which IIRC was somehow prompted by WTC/9-11 etc.
I don’t know about 7-11 specifically, but banks and the like are required to file a report with the feds for any actual cash withdrawals or payments $10,000 and up.
You keep saying this stuff and it is simply not true. You have to separate out the concept of someone selling you something with those that you owe true debts against. No one has to sell you anything if they don’t want to. If they don’t like the rainbows on your printed checks, it is completely true that they can tell you to forget that and stand in line at the bank to get $100 in unrolled pennies if you want to continue with the business at hand.
Paying an incurred debt is a completely different matter. That is where the concept of legal tender for all debts public and private come into play. It also intersects with checking law which is oddly interesting if told in the right context. It obviously gets to be a little more nuanced than the examples given below but parties that are owed debts cannot arbitrarily specify how those debts can be repaid whether it is cash, coin, or different types of checks.
Here is Cecil on checks and their forms:
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_352b.html
Here is a classic Internet story that teaches about check law. It is long but very educational and worth it.
In summary, if someone already owes you money, you don’t get to dictate the valid means of payment that they give you.
Note the “already owes you money” part of this.
You can certainly write into a contract specified methods of payment. But that must be done when the contract is prepared, and the other party agrees to it by signing the contract. But if that wasn’t done, you can’t after-the-fact make a requirement for certain methods of payment.