I have a check from an insurance company that is made out to the mortgage company and/or building company and myself. Who is able to cash this check?
If a check is payable as follows:
PARTY A AND/OR PARTY B AND PARTY C
it would require, under the Uniform Commercial Code, an endorsement from PARTY C and an endorsement from either PARTY A or PARTY B. As a practical matter, however, someone reading the list of payees might think it meant the check had to be endorsed either by PARTY A or by both PARTY B and PARTY C. It depends on how you group the listed payees.
What matters is which of the three named parties has a legal interest in the check proceeds. Clearly you do, since presumably you have an interest in the insured property. Whether the building company has an interest will depend on whether it is owed money by you or the mortgage company. The mortgage company has an interest because it has an interest in the real estate.
The safest approach is to get all three parties to agree to endorse the check and then have one of them deposit the check after it has been endorsed, settling with the other parties for their respective pieces of the pie. Your bank may be reluctant to accept a check for deposit with endorsements it cannot verify, so you should probably avoid trying to deposit it. The mortgage company be the one to deposit the check, giving out its own checks for whatever is due to you and the building company, if anything.
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If a check is payable as follows: