Today my wife wanted to deposit a check, but as it was made out to me, it required my endorsement, which I had forgotten to provide. I told her over the phone to save another trip to the bank and just forge my signature. She insisted she could not. I figured forgery with permission must be legal, but she wasn’t going to risk the wrath of the authorities.
Well, presuming she would have gotten caught, (which I doubt), would she have comitted some form of legal or ethical infraction by forging my signature on a check, even with my express permission and instruction?
My Dad used to man a bank branch in rural England someplace every now and again - just him and a security guard. He says that sometimes he’d get a cheque from Mr. Such & Such w/o a signature, and had to have them come in to sign it. Mrs. Such & Such would show up, sign it, and when he checked it with the records it would match. ('cause since the Mrs. knew how to write, she was the one to do all that stuff).
This helps you because… well… it don’t. But I figured I tell you anyway.
I am not your lawyer, not licensed in your jurisdiction, this is not legal advice, etc.
Fraud can be generally defined as holding something out to be true when it isn’t, with the intent that someone will rely on it, so that you can get something of value. Here, you asked your wife to hold out her signature as yours, so that the bank would part with some cash on the belief that you had signed the check. What happens if you later came by and said, I never signed that! Your poor wife would be left hanging out to dry.
Now – if the account had your name on it, I don’t think you needed to endorse the check at all. Or, you could execute some form of power of attorney to give her the right to sign your checks, but that would likely need to be filed with the bank.
Unless you ever complained about the forgery, no one would know. The only way the police would get involved is if you complained to them your wife had forged your signature on a check.
Well, you could argue that your wife is holding it to be true, not that you signed the check, but that you gave permission for the specified amount of money to the specified person. Because that’s what the signature is really FOR, after all.
What if the wife signed it “Her name” for “His name”? Would that be acceptable in terms of a check? I know it is acceptable on other legal documents, but I don’t know if it is for checks or not, or what conditions must be met ahead of time for it to be acceptable.
Sure. You could argue that there’s no fraud because you intended your wife to take the money out. But I really doubt that you could get a court to agree with you. The fraud is that she signed his name, and held that signature out to be authentic.
rfgdxm is likely right that the police are unlikely to detect the forgery because no one is likely to complain, but the OP asked us to presume that she would get caught. In that case, the police are likely to take the position that it wasn’t his signature and therefore it is a forgery. The DA may drop the case as “no harm, no foul,” but who knows?
Zabali_Clawbane, I haven’t the first clue, but I’m interested in the answer, too.
The only person in a position to file legal charges in this case is the husband. If someone steals my bicycle, and I say “the thing was just a piece of junk, and I don’t care”, and never report it, the police won’t consider it a crime.
IANAL, but I don’t think she would have committed either a legal or an ethical infraction. Probably nobody would have noticed.
I assume she was not depositing it into your joint account, in which case I don’t think it would have even needed your signature.
I used to have this account for my kids, and I was supposed to endorse checks made out to them that went into this account as something like, “Hilarity N. Suze, as trustee for Kidlet N. Suze,” which I actually did a couple of times–then I just scrawled my usual illegible HS… and that worked, too. (I suppose my kids could sue me. Don’t tell them, okay?)
I think I heard this on this board in another thread that if the check is for deposit, the bank is allowed to ‘fill in’ the required endorsement. That is, if the check isn’t signed the bank is allowed to act as if it was and transfer the funds into your account.
I could easily be wrong here.
(Maybe this will jog some memories.)
(And yes, it is a tangent to the purpose of the thread, but it might save someone a bit of hassle later on if it’s true.)
The crime of forgery generally refers to the making of a fake document, the changing of an existing document, or the making of a signature without authorization.
Just a WAG, but the problem from the bank’s POV with this innocent transaction, is what about couples who are not being straightforward with each other? Wife filches check from sleeping hubby’s wallet, rushes down to the bank, deposits it, then withdraws the cash in an hour or a day, and the hubby complains to the bank (that the check is drawn on) that his check has gone missing, and they investigate. I suspect the bank where the check was deposited has some ‘splainin’ to do, especially if they have the hubby’s signature on file. So they have a rule, and need to enforce it unless they want to go into the marriage-evaluation business.
muttrox it’s more common with children, but it is also used in the case of accident for hospital billing purporses and authorization for treatment. Example, the family’s medical insurance is through the husband’s job, (the “account” is in his name, not hers) so he has to sign as the person to be billed, but he’s been in an accident and is in the ER. The wife can legally sign “Mrs. soandso” for “Mr. soandso” on the acceptance of billing, and can sign for her husband authorizing treatment too. Those are considered “legal” documents. I’m pretty sure there are other examples in which this can be used, but I can’t bring them up. Does anyone else know of one?
I don’t know what banks you are all dealing with, but over the years I’ve had accounts with Bank of America, Wells Fargo, First Interstate, and several smaller banks. I virtually never endorse checks I’m depositing. My business checks get stamped (the stamp lists the business name, account number, and the words “deposit only”). With my personal checks, for the most part, I or my wife just write the account number and the words “deposit only” on the back.
There are a few checks I’ve received that have “endorsement required” (or words to that effect) printed on the back, and I do sign those.
Cashing checks, on the other hand, always requires an endorsement.
And I think with checks enforcement is up to the writer of the check. I once gave my son a check. He later called to tell me that I had forgotten to sign it. So I told him to sign my name and I would tell my bank that I authorized it. When I went to the bank I was told that my signature was an unessential detail for all practical purposes. As long as the check had an amount, the magnetic identifiers printed on it and any sort of scribble on the signature line it would clear.
The importance of the signature card used for the purpose of confirming that a check is genuine by the bank is apparently a thing of much simpler past-way past.
