You may be in a situation when you need to place a stop payment on a check that you have written. There are a few legitimate reasons why you may decide to place a stop payment: a lost or stolen check or failure to provide goods or services as promised. It is fairly easy to stop payment on a check, but you need to act promptly. If the bank has already processed the check, then you do not have any recourse.
To stop payment on a check you will need to go to your local branch and fill out the paperwork. Some banks may have a grace period of twenty-four hours in which they are not responsible if the check is paid. This is because the check may already be presented in the system. This is to protect the bank from paying on something that they may have already processed. Most banks charge a fee of at least twenty-five dollars to stop payment on a check.
Once you stop payment on the check you should still keep an eye on your account. A teller may have processed your check without checking the stop payments. If this happens, then you are not responsible. You should call your bank and they should credit your account the money they have debited your account. Most stop payments drop off after a certain amount of time, so you should make note of that as well.
Additionally you should inform the person that you issued the check to, that you have stopped payment. If this is a lost or stolen check, this will prevent them from accidentally cashing it if they did find it. If it is because of a failure to provide a product or service, then you need to be sure to cancel the order, so that they do not do the work for you unnecessarily.
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