What about a check written to you and loan is in the memo?

Ok say a ex girlfriend has a check she wrote you from 2 yrs ago and now wants to collect the money because she wrote loan in the memo section?|||It doesn't matter what she writes in the memo section. Now, if YOU wrote something on the check that mentioned a loan, that's different. Ultimately it will be her word against yours in small claims court, and she may have the upper-hand if she has a good story to go along with that cancelled check.|||In small claims court, she'll win. Better pay up.|||The memo section has no legally binding meaning on anyone. Plenty of folks have learned the hard way by trying to pay off credit card accounts for less than the outstanding balance by writing "Payment in Full" in the memo section and then being successfully sued by the issuing bank for the remaining balance.



Unless you have a written loan contract with the ex (or are dumb enough to admit in court that it was a loan) she has no leg to stand on. Tell her to go ahead and sue in Small Claims Court and see where it goes. She'll lose.



The sole purpose of the memo line is for notes or information of benefit to the issuer of the check. Nothing in the memo section binds the payee to anything at all. It could just as easily have meant that she paid back a loan that you had made to her.|||What a sicko. Did she actually keep a copy of the cashed check, just to waive it in your face two years later?!





OK. I got it. Just write her a check and in the memo line write: "For blackmail"





That should even out the universe.|||What about it? If she did write that why didn't you see it when you deposited the check?|||What you don't say is whether the money really was a loan. If it was a loan given to you in good faith that you would pay it back, that's what you should do.|||Bash has it nailed. I've worked in banking as well. If she's stupid enough to try and sue you, just tell the judge that you had loaned her $xxx and she was just paying you back. Tell the judge that the split was somewhat acrimonious and you are not sure what her motives are.





The point is that the memo line is so vague as to be meaningless.|||My ex wife used to put "Money for poison to kill husband" on every check........





Devil is in the details.





I doubt she'd sue and win.