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A stale dated check is a check presented to a bank more than six months after the date written on it. Under the Uniform Commercial Code, a bank is not obligated to pay a check more than six months old, though many banks still will. For the business that wrote the check, a stale dated check is not free money: if the vendor never cashes it, the funds eventually belong to the state, not to you.
What is a stale dated check?
The date on a check is not decoration. UCC section 4-404 says a bank has no obligation to pay a check presented more than six months after its date, although it may charge its customer's account in good faith if it chooses to. That is the whole legal basis for the six-month rule, and it is why you will hear it stated two different ways. Both are true: the check is not automatically void at six months and one day, but the bank is free to refuse it.
What that means in practice is uncertainty, which is the last thing an AP team wants. A nine-month-old check might clear tomorrow, or it might bounce and cost the vendor a returned-item fee. Neither outcome is under your control once the check is out there.
Do checks expire after 6 months?
Not exactly. Six months is when the bank's obligation to pay ends, not when the debt disappears. You still owe the vendor the money. If they show up with an eleven-month-old check and their bank refuses it, the underlying invoice is still unpaid and they can still come after you for it. The check is just an instrument for moving money, and its staleness does not settle the obligation.
Some companies print "void after 90 days" on their check stock, and it is worth knowing that this language does not bind the bank. Banks will generally still honor those checks for up to six months under the UCC rule. The printed language is a nudge to the payee, not a legal expiry date.
What AP should do with an outstanding check, month by month
| Age of the check | What accounts payable should do |
|---|---|
| 30 to 60 days | Flag it on the bank reconciliation as outstanding. Confirm the mailing address on the vendor record is current. |
| 60 to 90 days | Contact the vendor. Most uncashed checks at this age are simply lost in the mail or sitting in the wrong pile at the payee's office. |
| 90 to 180 days | Place a stop payment and reissue, preferably by ACH. Do not just write a second check without the stop payment, or you risk paying twice. |
| Past 180 days | The check is stale dated. Stop payment, restore the liability on the books, and start tracking it as potential unclaimed property. |
| Past the state dormancy period | Send due diligence letters, then remit the funds to the state through escheatment. |
Can you void a stale dated check?
You can stop payment on it, which is the practical equivalent. Contact your bank, place a stop payment on the check number, and confirm it took effect. Only then reissue. Stop payments usually carry a fee and, at many banks, expire after six months unless renewed, which is a detail worth checking if you are dealing with a check that has been outstanding a long time.
Voiding the check in your accounting system without stopping payment at the bank is the mistake to avoid. Your ledger then says the money is available, but the physical check is still out there and can still clear. That is how a company ends up paying the same invoice twice, and it is the same failure mode behind most duplicate payments.
What happens to an uncashed vendor check?
Nothing good, if you leave it alone. The money does not revert to you. It sits on your books as an outstanding item, cluttering every bank reconciliation, and after the state's dormancy period it becomes unclaimed property that you are legally required to report and remit to the state. Vendor checks typically carry a dormancy period of three to five years depending on the state, though some states run shorter periods for certain property types.
Before you remit, most states require you to perform due diligence: send a letter to the payee's last known address, usually somewhere between 60 and 180 days before the report is filed, telling them you are holding money for them. Only after that goes unanswered do you turn the funds over. Writing the amount back into miscellaneous income instead, which some companies still quietly do, is not an option under state law and is exactly what unclaimed property audits look for. Our guide to escheatment for accounts payable walks through that process in detail.
How do I keep checks from going stale in the first place?
Every stale dated check started as a payment method that requires an envelope, a mailbox, and a human on the other end to remember to deposit it. The two fixes are boring and they work.
First, pay by ACH wherever the vendor will take it. An ACH payment cannot get lost in the mail, cannot sit in a drawer, and cannot go stale. It either lands or it fails, and it fails immediately with an explanation. Moving even half of your check volume to ACH vendor payments removes most of the problem permanently.
Second, review the outstanding check list every single month, not once a year when the auditors ask. Pull the list from your bank reconciliation, sort by age, and work anything past 60 days. Reconciling the cleared items against your payment register is much faster when you can bring the bank and payment activity into your accounting file automatically rather than eyeballing a PDF statement against your ledger. The checks that go stale are almost always the ones nobody looked at.
Third, keep vendor addresses current. A large share of uncashed checks are simply mailed to an address the vendor left two years ago. A vendor portal where suppliers maintain their own remittance details, combined with vendor payment software that defaults to electronic payment, cuts the outstanding check list down to something you can actually manage.
Frequently asked questions
How long is a check good for?
Personal, business, and payroll checks are generally considered good for six months, or 180 days, from the date written. After that a bank is not obligated to honor the check under the Uniform Commercial Code, though many banks will still process it at their discretion. Certified checks, cashier's checks, and government checks follow different rules.
Will a bank cash a check that is 8 months old?
It might. The bank has no obligation to, but it can pay a stale check in good faith and charge the account. The risk sits with both sides: if the issuing company has already stopped payment or closed the account, the check bounces and the depositor may be hit with a returned-item fee.
What is the difference between a stale dated check and a void check?
A stale dated check is one that is simply old, more than six months past its written date, and may or may not still be honored. A void check is one the issuer has actively cancelled, usually by placing a stop payment with the bank, so it will not be paid at all. Age alone does not void a check; a stop payment does.
Can I write off an uncashed check to income?
No. Once a check has gone unclaimed past the state's dormancy period, the money is unclaimed property belonging to the payee, and state law requires you to report and remit it to the state after performing due diligence. Writing it back to miscellaneous income is a common practice and a common audit finding, and states can assess interest and penalties on the amounts you should have escheated.