Depositing Two-Party Checks at ATMs is Now Illegal

It started out as a simple deposit of a wedding gift, a two-party check, made out to my husband and I. We both signed it and deposited it in my regular checking account through the ATM machine. I routinely, once or more weekly, made trips to my bank, but this particular day was very busy. I'd also frequently deposited one-party checks through the ATM machine for many years. I had deposited two-party tax return checks years ago, and never thought it would be a problem this time. I'm writing this story because I wouldn't want this to happen to anyone else either. I belonged to this local bank for two years and did all my banking, including direct deposit there. The employees saw me in that bank usually two or more times per week, and yet nobody told me about a new law. The government should make more of an effort to get the information on new laws like this out to protect them.

It all began with my exemplary credit rating, which I was told was ruined because of Bin Laden and the terrorism he caused. That's why the government passed this law to make it harder for terrorists to get money. I can understand this, but it would have been nice if someone had told me about this new law. With this new law, not only couldn't I put it through the ATM deposit, but both I and my husband had to show identification to a teller along with my bank card to deposit it. Then when I visited the bank because I became aware that the money had not cleared when I called or checked the balance on the ATM, I was told the person who had written the check didn't have enough money in their account for it to clear. Later, after two visits to the bank, they finally figured out that it didn't clear because the check had not been deposited in person by both parties. This caused my check payments for monthly bills to bounce. The check was from close relatives who assured me that there was enough money in their accounts for it to clear. I hated having to ask my relatives repeatedly if there was enough money in their accounts. They kept assuring me there was. What started out as a perfect gift--money towards our honeymoon, was largely eaten up by penalty payments. Plus we had to delay our honeymoon.

My credit card, which had an APR of 6.9 percent because of prompt monthly payments by me went up to 33% to penalize me for a bad payment. I called the credit card company, but they said maybe in several months the payments would be brought down again. This is still pending. I'm just warning people to not make this same mistake because it was not really a mistake because we didn't know. It put me in a position that I had to keep asking a close relative if they had sufficient funds because the bank told me twice that was the problem before they finally found out and told me that it was because of not clearing the deposit with both of us in person.