About two years ago, I wrote a check at a grocery store. For some reason, the check has never been cashed. I haven’t stopped payment on the check. If the check came through now, would the bank cash it, or is there a time limit on how long a check can be cashed?
Some checks will have a time stamp “void after 60 days”
my accountant tells me to reissue a check if it’s much later than that.
But realisitically speaking, it’d probably go through your account without even being noticed.
Check with your bank. Some have a limit of how long the check is good for (most I’ve seen are about 6 months).
[unsolicited advice]
More importantly, check with the store as to why the check was never cashed. It’s possible the check was cashed against someone else’s account (happened to me with overdraft protection - someone wrote a bad check, and the money was taken from my checking account - our account number was a couple digits different). Or it is possible the check was lost or stolen (and especially with identity theft running rampant, you want to be very careful about this - check your credit reports for anything odd such as new credit cards and loan applications).
If you do a stop payment, it is always possible that the check could slip by if someone is not paying attention. Best to do a little background checking (haha) than have a really nasty surprise, such as a warrant for your arrest on a bad check charge or fraud.
Or is it possible that the check may have been cashed an you did not record it correctly? Always the possibility of a minor oversight on your part, too. [Not being snide, merely a possibility.]
6 months. (Although some places won’t cash a check after it is 3 months old because of a holder in due course defense.) Both limits are set forth in the UCC. Sorry about the lack of cites, but my copy of the UCC is at the office.
It’s suppose to be 6 months but I have wrote out checke w/ the wrong year (2000 instead of 2001). Also I have heard that if you sign your check ‘mickey mouse’ or such it will go through - in short nobody reads that stuff - just the amount.
Wouldn’t this be considered a stale-dated check by the bank? I thought they frowned upon those in a similar way that they frown upon post-dated checks. Once, when hurriedly writing out a check, I got the date wrong (missed the month by one- don’t ask me how). The clerk refused to accept it on the grounds that it wouldn’t be honored by the bank because it was stale-dated.
¦:¬þ
It should be cashable as long as the acct remains open.
I once asked a bank clerk (major bank, Bank of America) why they cashed a check right away that I post dated two weeks into the future & she said the date doesn’t matter that it’s between me & the person who cashed it. shrug.