heliotis (01/06/83)
My father used to tell me that, if you have a checking account at a bank,
the bank must allow ANY signed note by you as a valid request for payment.
For example, you could scratch out on a napkin, "Pay to the Order of
John Doe, the sum of One Hundred dollars ($100.00)", and sign it, and
with that napkin, John Doe could get $100.
In the interest of not defacing the family name, I assume that this WAS
true at some time. Do any of you have any opinions/knowledge about this?
I'm sure this would only apply to the branch of the bank where they keep
your signature.
Post your thoughts to the net, please.
Jim Heliotisbill (01/06/83)
Commercial banks, in my personal experience, accept a variety of negotiable instruments. When an auto dealership I once ran would buy cars at [a regular auto] auction, the title was put in an envelope which had a "bank draft" form printed on the face of it. This was processed, as far as our account was concerned, as a check with some special handling. Our bank did not charge extra for processing these. An order to pay, in the proper form, requires the bank to make payment if you have the money on deposit [a "demand deposit"]. Custom determines the fees, if any. I have heard of people "cashing" billboards, etc [television, in the early 60s]. Drafts usually have the phrase "payable at par", meaning the bank is to pay the face amount charging the signer of the draft any fees, etc. I have an old [circa 1945] business checkbook of my father's that has the same phrase printed on it. Bill Cox bill@uwisc ...seismo!uwvax!bill
ark (01/06/83)
I believe that banks are indeed obligated to honor any appropriate writing from you. I am aware of at least one bank which charges $10.00 to process any check that is not on a "standard" form. Many banks will give you "stock checks" for free. These are checks without your name on them, printed as plainly as possible. You will probably have to bug them to get them to do it.
schnable (01/06/83)
re: check this out... As I recall from my business law class, yes indeed a check can be written on any surface and it is valid. Ah, a whole new meaning to the prase 'rubber check'. Andy Schnable IH BTL x2680
prgclb (01/06/83)
It used to be true that any medium (e.g. napkins) would serve as a check, until the Federal Reserve (sometime in the 1960s) required that any checks it handled needed to be magnetically encoded. Try printing magnetic numbers on your napkin! Seriously, I remember as a kid when my parents went to a store without their checkbook and bought more than they had cash for, they'd ask the cashier for a blank check. It was simply a piece of paper that asked you to fill in the name and address of your bank, plus all the other typical stuff (pay to the order of, amount, signature). In this day and age, where you have to get fingerprinted, photographed, blood-typed, etc to use checks that already have your phone number, social security number, address, etc, it's hard to believe the trusting practices of an earlier era! Carl Blesch Bell Labs - Indian Hill Naperville, Ill. ihuxm!prgclb
dennis (01/06/83)
That sort of thing used to work, but last time I tried it, the business (car repair shop) refused it, saying that whoever they gave their checks to (either bank or accounting house, I don't remember which) refused to accept anything that wouldn't pass through the Federal Reserve system (ie, it didn't have the bank and acct #s in machine-readable form on the check).
leichter (01/07/83)
A check is an order to your bank to transfer money from your account. To be valid, it has to include four things: The amount; your signature; who to pay; your bank's name. (Actually, "who to pay" is probably unnecessary; if you leave it out, the check is probably good for whoever presents it. I'm pretty sure you DON'T have to include a date.) So...writing on a paper napkin is fine. HOWEVER, all this means is that an instrument so drawn, presented at YOUR bank, is valid. It doesn't mean anyone else - probably including other branches of your bank - have to accept it - and they almost certainly won't. (Of course, checks are not legal tender so no one HAS to accept even a "normal" check - but they are useful because they are widely accepted.) -- Jerry decvax!yale-comix!leichter
ken (01/07/83)
Many times I have received in the mail a request for monetary contributions. A couple of times, there was enclosed a printed form which looked somewhat like a check. The accompanying note said that if I signed the note, and included the name and address of my bank, the check would be honored. I suspect these particular organizations solicited contributions in this way because it is not generally known that one can withdraw funds from one's checking account without the normal check; therefore more people would contribute to see if it really worked. Unfortunately, I did not make a contribution, so I can't say with experience that t is possible to withdraw from a checking account without a standard printed check.
neiman (01/07/83)
It may be the case that banks will give you stocks checks without your name. The problem is that no one will take checks without your name anymore.....
mark (01/07/83)
I seem to remember a newspaper article a few years back where some guy sent his wife a check for alimony. He wanted to make a point, so he wrote the check on the back of his shirt (!) and literally sent her the shirt off his back. The bank honored it. I also vaguely remember that it's supposed to be legal to write a check on such obscure objects as a door. I do wonder how the bank is supposed to tell whose account to debit if all they have is your signature and the name of the payee. Many signatures are not legible, and in any case the account number ought to be helpful.
mat (01/08/83)
There have recently been some cases of people sending checks to the IRS on ridiculous objects, like women's undies, prophylactics, etc. Many of the new special checking accounts ( interest on checking, NOW, and whatnot ) have contracts with a provisions that 'I agree to write withdrawl orders on forms provided by the Bank.' I'm not sure how enforcable this is. As regards the magnetic numbers, I receive a few of my cancelled checks back with tags attatched across the width of the check with a copy of the magnetic information, apparently because the magnetic material on the check is somehow damaged. -hou5a!mat q readnews -x -n btl.wanted
nxn (01/08/83)
In England at least, checks (cheques) may be written on any reasonable surface. I believe (I'm no lawyer) "reasonable" boils down to portable, not obscene etc.. Disgruntled taxpayers wishing to protest have used doors, toilet seats, and scantily clad dancers among many others. These cases commonly surface as news fillers when rain stops play in the test match. Benny Hill has probably done at least one sketch on the subject. Maybe someone with a copy of the Guinness Book of Records could post a list of check superlatives? :-) Dave Nixon, RV/BTL, Naperville, IL. ixn5e!nxn
jcwinterton (01/08/83)
Back in the late '50s and early '60s when I worked for a bank the Bills of Exchange Act would allow ANY instrument to be used as a bill of exchange provided it had the legal wording. Any document could be used as a negotiable instrument provided it had the phrase "Pay to the order of .... " an amount and a signature. It also had to be drawn on a recognized bank or clearing house. If it was not drawn on a clearing agency, then it could be "accepted" by someone who had such an account. I have seen cheques written on egg shells, steel plates and other misc- ellaneous materials. The most interesting one was to pay off a mortgage and was written on a glazed brick. Alas, with the coming of automated clearing, the banks and the bankers' associations have caused the various acts to be amended so that not only must cheques be written on paper, but of paper in a range of permissable sizes. If this is not done, the banks will impose an enormous and fully permissable service charge on the item in question and may refuse to honour it. Sigh! Things sure aren't like they used to be in the old days ... John Winterton (watmath!watbun!jcwinterton)
mam (01/08/83)
An extremely well-to-do person (said to be John D. Rockafellar) is said to have inscribed "pay $1000" and his signature on the stomache of a belly dancer in appreciation of her dancing, once. The bank honored this check!
faunt (01/08/83)
My lover just told me that she saw someone use a DEPOSIT SLIP as a check at our local food coop, by writing on it, "this is a check. Pay to the order of ...". That would meet the possible requirement of having the MCR codes on it. I am going to try to pay my VISA bill to B of A with a deposit slip from my Crocker account, and see what happens. I have also gotten back checks that had an additional piece of paper attached to it with MCR codes on it, which she, who worked in a bank before she discovered VAXen, says is attached by the Federal Reserve System if their equipment cannot read the imprinting on the check.
dee (01/11/83)
When you sign up with a bank these days, you normally agree to abide by the banks by-laws which probably prohibit wierd media for checks (or at least impose an extra charge). Also, these days the Federal Reserve check clearing system imposes an extra charge for processing anything that can't be sorted by the little numbers at the bottom. So, while you can make a "valid" negotiable instrument on most anything, you may have difficulty getting people to take it and end up with a lot of extra charges for trying to clear it through the banking system. Donald Eastlake (decvax!cca!dee)
dee (01/14/83)
Almost all automatic check processing machinery these days uses optical character recognition of the numbers at the bottom although they were originally magnetic.