I have a friend who has signed over his social security check over to me to be cashed and I sent it to my bank to be deposited. They sent it back to me saying my friend has to be on my account, but I have deposited my fiance's check to my account and he is not on my account. I'm confused. What can I do? Where can I go? Should I send it back to my bank?
Although your bank could have accepted the check for deposit to your account, assuming that you properly endorsed it, it is under no obligation to do so. More and more banks are adopting fairly strict rules against accepting third party checks -- checks payable to a non-customer and endorsed to a depositor -- for deposit. They are doing so because of a heightened awareness of stolen checks and forged endorsements, for which the bank can be liable.
You can appeal to your bank and ask that it accept the check for deposit, or you can ask your friend to buy his check back from you. You might want to just get out of the check cashing business, even if you only do it as a favor, because you'll find it increasingly difficult to find a bank that will accept third party checks for deposit from other than a bona fide business.
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Although your bank could have accepted the check for deposit to your account, assuming that you properly endorsed it, it is under no obligation to do so. More and more banks are adopting fairly strict rules against accepting third party checks -- checks payable to a non-customer and endorsed to a depositor -- for deposit. They are doing so because of a heightened awareness of stolen checks and forged 