need professional banking information
 

I did some consulting work for a dentist in a neighboring city. He mailed me a check for my services and he wrote on the back endorsement area 'for deposit only'. Since I have yet to endorse the check, do I have to leave that deposit only on there or can I cross it out and just endorse the check since I don't have a banking account anywhere?

IIRC, the only way to undo the "for deposit only" is to have it crossed out with his signature or initials followed by your endorsement. You could always ask him to void that check and just write you another one without the stamp.

curious, without a single bank account, how do you pay bills? gas, electicity, etc?

either cash or the wife uses one of those pay as you go bank cards from visa
-----Added 4/12/2008 at 03 : 10 : 14-----
so a person gets to determine what i do with money paid to me? seems to me that doesn't make sense.

do you have space that you can endorse your name above the "for deposit only"?

the rules are like this to prevent check fraud. deposit only helps you so that if the check were stolen and cashed by someone else you wouldn't get it back.. where as if they can only deposit it, you have to have the account there to get the monies.

simple.

probably

from what i understand the point of endorsement is where you can write something.

so if you write:

pay to the order of: cynthetiq
dksuddeth

you've special endorsed the check to me.

your signature is approving what is ABOVE it.

so the "for deposit only" doesn't really make sense if it is below your endorsement, and thus you should be able to cross it out.

I think that the best suggestion is to get another check and then have this one voided.