A customer noticed that two checks cleared his account that was dated almost a year ago. He wants the checks returned. Is that possible? The checks cleared last Monday and he notified us today. The checks were made to the same business.

The lady that handles these situations is out, so that is why I'm posting this...

Review your state's version of the UCC Section 4-404.

The model version states:
"A bank is under no obligation to a customer having a checking account to pay a check, other than a certified check, which is presented more than six months after its date, but it may charge its customer's account for a payment made thereafter in good faith."

The bank generally has no liability if they paid a stale dated check in good faith if the customer did not notifiy the bank ahead of time.

Thank you for your response, but I want to make sure I get this right since there are so many people involved and every one of them is irate.

We have no liability if the checks remain paid. However, we can return check for reason of stale date check? We can return the check even though the checks came through the customer’s account last week.

No - you could only return the checks within your midnight deadlines.

Whatever beef they have with the merchant - it is now between them. If they did not want the checks paid, they should have placed a stop payment on them.

Ditto this ^^^^^ from rlcarey

Your account agreement probably addresses post dated and stale dated items. Our agreement states:

You authorize us to accept and pay any check without regard to the date of the check, even if the check is presented for payment before its date, unless you notify the credit union of the postdating in advance.

The credit union is under no obligation to you but may elect to pay a check or draft drawn on your account that is presented more than six months after its date.

The responsibility is on your customer.

Thank you for the direct answer. That is what I thought, but I wanted to make sure since I don't deal with this on a day to day basis.

The first place I looked was our new account agreement. It did not addres this, maybe we need a better agreement.

Either banks do a miserable job of educating their customers on the "stale date" and "post dated" fallacies -- those portions of the UCC were changed years ago -- or customers don't pay attention to the information they are given. It's probably more accurate to say that for huge numbers of bank checking account customers -- those who don't regularly monitor and reconcile their accounts -- the only time they would ever become aware that a check had been paid before its date or more than 6 months after its date is if the account happened to become overdrawn.