I wrote a check with an unambiguous but casual written amount - why did the recipient's bank reject it for "invalid written amount"?

Question

I wrote a check for 3495.00. For the written amount, I wrote "Thirty four ninety five and 00/100". When the recipient deposited the check, it was rejected due to "invalid written amount", and the recipient was charged a fee.

I know that the most "proper" written amount would've been "Three thousand four hundred ninety five and 00/100". Second best would've been "Thirty four hundred ninety five and 00/100". Yet, I still don't see anything ambiguous about the way I wrote it originally. I wrote 0 cents, so there isn't any ambiguity about whether the "ninety five" is cents or dollars. And, the written amount is intended to be a verification of the number field.

What is invalid about the written amount here? Does the recipient have a case for getting their fee reimbursed?

Answer 1

"thirty four ninety five" is not a number. How many currency did you want to pay? Thirty four? Ninety Five? Thirty four hundreds and ninety five cents? Maybe someone else added the "and 00/100" later and multiplied the intended amount by a hundred, the bank has no way of knowing.

You know what the proper way should be, why didn't you use it? So yes, I'd argue you're at fault. On the other hand the recipient should have checked and insisted on a properly written amount, so you might be within your rights to suggest to split the fee.

---

By the way, "Thirty four hundred ninety five and 00/100" would probably not work either, since it could have originally been "four hundred..." and someone added "thirty" before and "3" in the numeric field. The bank would probably reject such a writing as well.

Write the full amount properly, the tenth of a second you tried to save is not worth the headache you're having now.

Answer 2

Suppose you write me a cheque for "thirty four ninety five" and fill in the numeric amount as $34.95. I could easily add "and 0/100" to the end of the written amount, connect your decimal point up to your 9, and add .00 to the end. That would then make the cheque identical to the one you're describing in the question.

Using the proper words for numbers largely prevents this kind of fraud. That's the whole point. So the recipient's bank should absolutely NOT accept "thirty four ninety five and 0/100" as a synonym for the amount you intended. That's for YOUR protection.

Answer 3

The reason it needs to be, in your words, "proper" is that it is a legal, financial, contractual transaction, free from ambiguity. Much as you like casualness, this is not the place for it. You're wrong, they're right.

Answer 4

If your words aren't completely clear, the only reasonable thing the bank can do is ask you to write the check again. And as has been pointed out, the example given is less unambiguous than the OP assumed.

For what it's worth, back around 1970 I was explicitly trained to write the number in words from the very start of the line, preferably WithCapitalizedInitials rather than with spaces between words, to draw a line through any unused space, and to always use a specific kind of phrasing, all to prevent both misunderstanding and forgery-by-alteration. For example,

SixThousandFiveHundredThreeDollarsAnd21/xx---(Dollars)

The word Dollars is optional since the check labels that line as Dollars, though I often write it anyway.

Zero cents could be indicated as No/xx, 00/xx, Exactly, or more commonly by starting to strike through the rest of the line immediately after the last word so there was no space to insert pennies. (There was a time when pennies were much more significant...) I lean heavily toward Exactly.

The only part of that which is at all informal is the convention of using /xx as standardized alternate notation for /100.

There is nothing wrong with informality, but legal and financial documents are generally not the right place for it. Yeah, it would be nice if we could be sloppier about it, but the rules are there and get enforced for good reasons. If you want to be less formal, there are always credit cards; they don't use the numerals-versus-words crosscheck at all so the issue doesn't arise.

(By the way, if anyone else's script has degenerated as badly as mine has: while I was taught to write the check in script so a break in the continuous line could help expose an alteration, I've been using "printed" handwriting on checks for decades, for readability's sake.)

Answer 5

In the US there is a specific way of writing the "legal amount", i.e. the amount spelled out in English, on a check. The Code of Federal Regulations (31 CFR 240, I think it is) is pretty explicit about it.

When processing checks, banks' proof-of-deposit systems use handwriting recognition software to read the legal amount and the "courtesy amount", written in numerals, and to compare the two.

If the software reads a legal amount that isn't in the expected format it rejects it, reports a mismatch. If it's caught by the bank of first deposit, they reject it there and then. If it's caught by the paying bank it sends the check image back through FedWire to the bank of first deposit as a "bad return".

In either case, no human made that decision, just a machine adhering rigidly, as required by law, to the rules laid down in the US CFR.

Answer 6

Does the recipient have a case for getting their fee reimbursed?

IMHO, yes. If not from the bank, then from you.

I believe the fee is mostly to deter fraud attempts. If the check was deposited at a teller and it was accepted, then there's an extra bonus argument that the teller thought the check was valid (enough) too.

I assume you have already given the person a new check. When they deposit it, they should request the fee be reimbursed, since the re-issued check validates it wasn't a fraud attempt.

If the bank doesn't budge on refunding the fee, then I believe you should reimburse the fee yourself, since you caused it in the first place. (I once had a water leak in my condo and it damaged the unit below me. Their insurance covered it minus their deductible, and so I wrote them a check to cover their deductible, because I felt like it was the right thing to do. Your scenario seems similar.)

Answer 7

Call me a cynic but...

If the bank is allowed to charge a fee for rejecting a cheque, they're going to look for any excuse to reject a cheque.

In this case, you've not written a real number. Whilst it's arguably obvious what you meant, it's easy enough to justify rejecting it so obviously they're going to err on the side of rejecting it and collecting their fee.

Answer 8

Almost all the answers given to this question are ludicrous, because they depend on the notion that one must compute the set of strings describing a number that cannot be modified into different valid strings by extension. Firstly, all the sets proposed (as of the writing of this answer) are incorrect. Secondly, nobody can compute that set mentally; it would be a challenging problem for a computer-science student.

Legally, a check is valid if it unambiguously describes an amount of money.

Your state may have further rules on checks. Your bank may also. However, in practice, a bank can choose to reject a check for almost any reason. To force a bank to honor a legal check that the bank declined to honor would doubtless cost much more than it would be worth it to pursue. Thus, we adhere to certain formats of check to hopefully avoid this scenario.