One of the most common, and oldest, types of identity theft is the simple stealing of your checkbook. Someone gets ahold of your checkbook and writes checks, pretending to be you and signing your name. All of the identity theft protection services in the world can’t stop someone with a convincing fake ID and your checkbook.
So, when you have a check go missing or lose your checkbook, you’ve got some choices to make. You can contact the bank and have them place a stop payment hold on that check. This will cause the bank to refuse payment on the check if it’s presented.
Not a permanent solution
Unfortunately, most banks won’t keep the stop payment on a check for more than six months. That might not sound so bad, because most banks won’t cash a check that’s more than six months old. However, that’s not a hard and fast rule. If a teller decides that the check looks good, even if it’s seven months old, many banks will give them some leeway in cashing the check. And that’s where that stolen check can come back to bite you.
Keep on stopping
The obvious solution is to put another stop payment on the check after six months. The problem with this is that, unless you’ve filed a police report for a stolen check, chances are pretty good that your bank is going to require you to pay a fee each time you want to put a stop payment on. You could be looking at almost $80 in fees, just to protect yourself.
How long should it go on?
There’s no easy answer to this question. At some point, you probably don’t want to continue paying $30 or $40 every six months to protect yourself. Eventually, you’ve got to decide if the risk that someone will write a check is worth it. After all, if they do write the check, most checking account agreements only hold you responsible for a certain dollar value in that transaction. Often, it’s less than what the first two stop payment requests would add up to be.
