Was doing some catching up today on my internet news when I came across this story about what I consider to be a frivolous lawsuit.
An 82 yr old widow stores a cashiers check she received in 1985 in a safe deposit box at the bank and suddenly finds out that after 5 years the money was considered unclaimed and surrendered to the state. Why should Chase honor a check that old is my question. Yes there was no expiration date on the check but I think it should be just common knowledge that checks don’t last forever. If more people held onto checks like she does then everyone’s books would be off for years and years creating a huge mess in the books.
I think my pay checks are only good for 180 days before they are no longer valid and I thought that was pretty standard. Did this women not have a job? Surely she would have known that checks do expire then. I know its mean and its her life savings and all but please, let Darwin do his work here.
May 9th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
No, a lot of older women DON’T know ANYTHING about money because she comes from a time when men/husbands handled ALL the finances. I used to clean houses owned by the wealthy and the doddering. Most of the elderly women didn’t even know how to write me a check. They would have their ’son’ or ‘grandson’ handle paying me. It doesn’t have to make sense, it’s just the way things were ‘way back when’. But that doesn’t make her ‘dumb’.