This is mostly a rant about a stupid check thing that happened to me today. I gave a show barn manager a check for a large amount of money. I of course, expected it to be cashed as soon as possible. After a week it still hadn't been cashed. I called him and he said he'd cash it. Well now it's two months from then and last week I had told him NOT to cash it because it was very VERY hard to keep the balance. I said I would just get him cash, because I had been waiting for his check to go through, I still had other people to pay and because of him it's been later and later and I got people asking where their money is. SO being the stupid jerk he is, and very unprofessional, cashes my check ANYWAY. I got a letter in the mail for insufficient funds and a over draft fee of 35$. I was very PO'd so I call him and he's like oh... Then that means they fined me too, well bring in an extra 50 to the barn this weekend so we can be square. I was like EXCUSE ME?!! To a person that makes 8 bucks an hour thats a lot of money! You effing waited 2 months to cash it! It's your own fault! And I was extra mad because prior to this letter, I was in the dentist for 4 hours and got a ton of shots. Not to mention my check from work is enough to cover my fines, his fines, and the amount I owe him. But thats it. I have bills to pay just like everyone else. I'm so mad. I'm going to give him what's owed but I do NOT want to pay his stupid fee. AM I wrong? I mean I told him not to cash it, and to wait. Why do I need to pay even more? I need some reassurance, that I'm not being out of line, because what's fair is fair. He messed up. CHECK ETIQUETTE, cash ASAP. Geeez, common freaking sense? Does not 99% of America live by this rule? Am I insane, because I'm going to be with all these money problems. Not really problems, but nuisances.

Sounds to me he thought you weren't good on the money and cashed, hoping he'd get the money. I'm sorry that had to happen to you, it wasn't nice of him to do that to you since you were honest and told him not to cash it.

On the other hand, it is better to consider the money gone, like the poster above said, once you write the check. I keep an excel spreadsheet on my bank accounts. And just because you have online banking doesn't mean it should replace a bank log for that account!

And this man sounds like a slimeball, I wouldn't pay his fees if it's not in writing.

Uttering a bad check is a serious crime here in Texas and  one can, and many people do, go to jail for doing that.
A check held longer than 6 months is 'stale' and a bank is not obligated to pay it, but prior to that time if you have written a check you are legally accountable for it.  The bank may charge reasonable fees for insufficient funds and this business may charge you funds to cover the banks charges. Remember when you write a bad check, not only does your bank issue charges, but the bank holding the check will (and is allowed to) issue charges to the person you gave the check to.  Remember that in commercial paper there is inevitably a string of banks not just one, that is involved in every transaction where there is a check involved.

 One cannot issue further instructions on commercial paper once one has written it,  so you cannot ask a business not to cash a check. (You said you issued instructions, but you did not say he agreed; in fact in a previous sentence you said he agreed to cash the check).  Often checks are bundled and sent in by businesses from time to time to their banks in large quantitites.

There is no 'check etiquette', There are many laws to protect you, but there are commercial paper laws to protect businesses and banks also.  Here, you were in the wrong because you cannot order anyone not to cash a check once you have issued it.  Most businesses do in fact cash checks as soon as possible but that is because they need the cash flow and also they want to ascertain that the checks are good.

As a previous poster said, if you write a check, act as if the money is not there.  The fact that you had other people to pay is irrelevant.  The money earmarked for this check does not change because you have other people to pay.

You can get a debit card from your bank which will allow the business to debit your account immediately.  In many ways this is safer anyway in these days of identity theft- I no longer use checks because one written to Walmart led to all kinds of aggravation when it was used to make further forged checks.

Checks are good for a min. of 6 months, so you have to keep the money floating in your account for 6 months.  A failure to do so is a fault on you, not on the company with the check in hand.  You need to start looking at the numbers on your checks and making sure they clear before assuming you have more money than you do in your account.  I agree with the excel spreadsheet.  I also do this.  I spreadsheet all incoming and outgoing.  Then at the end of the month if there is an unaccounted for discrepancy I can easily figure out where it occured (bill didn't come in etc...), or if worked a holiday that extra little something is there and can be used accordingly.  But this way if I have more money in my account than I should I can look down the list and go - hmmm.... power company hasn't gotten paid - why is that?  Go through the stack of bills, no bill... hmmm... call them - how much do I owe?  When was the bill mailed out?  I have not received, can you mail a duplicate bill?  Usually they don't have a problem with that, then you take down the information to mail out a check, or in our case, just go online and hit pay. 

I definitely feel your pain. My old landlord, great guy though he was, would cash my rent check around the same time that I was sending him the next one. It was very frustrating to see all that money in my account and know that I couldn't just spend on things I wanted. Lulled me into a false security.

But, ultimately, once you write that check, you just have to kiss that money goodbye, no matter how long it takes to get cashed. It's definitely frustrating to not just have it gone and done right away, but it's just an unfortunate reality.

I will agree that it was pretty crummy of him to go ahead and cash the check once he'd said that he'd wait for you to give him cash, but he could have been concerned that he wasn't going to see that money from you if he didn't cash it soon...which is a valid concern.

Ah, I must have misunderstood. Reading back over the OP, you're right. It was never stated that he agreed to accept cash. I just sort of assumed that he did.

This is the first time that's EVER happened. He said he WOULD cash the check when I broght it up after 2 weeks. After a month and a half I asked him not to cash it. which he agreed too. It's not a company, just a barn, and he just owns the barn. Yeah it's my fault the money was gone, but I thought  iwas being reasonable when I told him I would get hime cash. ANd because of that, I don't want to pay his banks fee. Once he agreed, I don't think it's my fault he didn't listen to me. It's more then likely a miscommunication. Needless to say I won't be writting checks to people anymore, just businesses.

So the worst thing happened. I went to the bank in hopes of getting my fee reverses. Well I got it reversed. 5 times. I got overdrafted 10 different times. So instead of thinking I had -35$ I had -309. Juuuuust peachy. He advised me to not pay his fee and to use money orders from now on. This never happens. I'm alwasy good with my money. So he will have to wait for payment as the money will be taken from my checks unti
l the balance is 0.   Unfortunate lesson thats for sure! I think he needs to pey my fees. I know that won't happen but oh well. I'm not even going to tell him this. It's stupid. This ruined my day. Prior to this I found out I got a job at Discover Card. So I was all sorts of happy. Things work out. Life goes on. Thanks for the advise and letting me vent guys.

The bank will be paid tomorrow. The guy wioll be paid in 2 weeks. I don't think I'll

I told him he would get his cash tomorrow. But now he won't because of these massive charges. He wasn't going to wait that long. And it's pretty obvious he doesn't need it anytime soon seeing how he waited so long to cash it. Even the bank said this would never had happened if he cashed it when he was supposed to. Yeah I know it was my fault when it comes right down to it and I'm not worried about going to jail or getting kicked out of the barn lol.

In some ways, I think the whole electronic banking thing has been a blessing and a curse.  When I first got a checking account, you couldn't check your balance easily anytime.  You *might* be able to get a balance at an ATM.  But really, most people just kept their checkbook register updated and then the only time you really knew what had happened at the bank was when you got your statement and you'd have to reconcile the register and the statement.  People would actually enter checks and balance their checkbook register while still at the checkstand.  Can you even imagine that now???  Obviously, plenty of people didn't keep up their register or made mistakes and found themselves in trouble.  Also, almost EVERY transaction from your checking account was a check so you pretty much had to assume any balance you got from an ATM was missing some transactions.  So because there was no "realtime" data available, people just knew they needed to keep up with it to avoid problems.