Can the owner of a company sign a check made out to his business over to an individual?
Legally, it's possible for a business to endorse a check payable to the business, so that it's payable to an individual. However, the endorsement is almost always a problem, particularly when the individual to whom the check has been transferred tries to cash or deposit it. That's because the bank being asked to accept the check for deposit or to cash it won't have a way to authenticate the business' endorsement. The bank will wonder whether the individual who endorsed the check on behalf of the business was authorized by the business to do so. Businesses that are corporations or other entities only act through individuals, and those individuals have to have the entity's authorization to act. Most business entities don't issue authorizations that permit an individual to negotiate checks except to deposit them, so endorsing a check to an individual could be something the entity doesn't allow. If the endorsement of the business was not authorized, a bank that takes the check for deposit could be pursued later, even up to three years later, based on a fraudulent endorsement that was made before the bank took the check.
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Legally, it's possible for a business to endorse a check payable to the business, so that it's payable to an individual. However, the 