Xref: utzoo comp.lang.postscript:4525 misc.legal:16052 Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!pt.cs.cmu.edu!rochester!ken From: ken@cs.rochester.edu (Ken Yap) Newsgroups: comp.lang.postscript,misc.legal Subject: Re: OCR font, check printing Message-ID: <1990Mar21.160626.14117@cs.rochester.edu> Date: 21 Mar 90 16:06:26 GMT References: <1990Mar19.000741.13602@cs.utk.edu> Reply-To: ken@cs.rochester.edu Organization: University of Rochester Computer Science Department Lines: 22 Address: Rochester, NY 14627, (716) 275-1448 |You can print your own checks as long as they conform to certain |specifications. According to my understanding, a document that |conforms to a specific legal definition qualifies as a check. This |document MUST include 5 pieces of information: the name of the bank |upon which it is drawn, the name of the payee, the date, the signature |of the account holder, and the amount of the check. Notice that the |account number is not among the requirements. Theoretically, you can |write a check on a napkin, and the bank is legally obligated to honor |it. | |I do not know if this applies in all states, or even if it is an |antiquated standard that has been superceded in recent years. But I |do know that, on a practical level, banks will give you a hard time if |you try to present a check that is not pre-printed. (Once I had to |deposit a check that was a photocopy, and the bank whined about it, |but they ultimately honored it -- and it was good.) My bank charges a fee for checks written on "non-standard forms". Presumably this is to discourage checks that cannot be processed by automation. Your bank may have a similar requirement in the fine print. I assume they make a special case for those gigantic checks used for charity publicity.