Found Alliance and Leicester cheque

antoniashaw

Hi, I am currently clearing out my grandmother's house and have just found cheque for a significant amount of money from the Alliance and Leicester. It is dated 2002 and looks like it was never cashed. Is there anything I can do? My grandmother died a couple of years ago.

jaybeetoo

Talk to Santander

DavidT67

Cheque won't be valid anymore.  You'll need to speak to the person / organisation who wrote it to establish what it related to and whether any monies are due and could still be claimed by the estate.  Highly doubtful after such a protected timeline. 

EarthBoy

After 18 years there's unlikely to be any record of it. 

Old_Lifer

Do not automatically assume there is money to be had here.

If a cheque had not arrived when expected and had ' gone missing in the post' it would be usual to put a 'stop' on it  and a few later issue a new cheque.  If the  original cheque  turned-up later it would of course have been worthless.

MarkCarnage

Reasonable chance it might have been stopped as noted above. 
Can you check records of your Grandmother's bank account around that time to see if an identical amount was paid in? 
If the amount was significant, A&L may themselves have taken steps at the time to check on it, particularly if it were a cheque issued by them, rather than on an A&L account held by a third party. 

Old_Lifer

The cheque may not necessarily have appeared on her bank statement.

Years ago whenever I received a fairly large chegue, I  paid it into one of my building society savings accounts.  That way it started earning interest more quickly and saved me the hassle of paying it in at the bank, waiting a few days for it to clear  and then going to the building society to pay it in.

Old_Lifer

To be clear for those who may not be familiar with cheques nowadays  , once the cheque had cleared in my bank account  I would  then have had to  write-out a cheque  myself for the same amount  and pay this into the building society.

MarkCarnage

Ok, check the BS statement too then......chances are none of the statements will still be around though. Bank would still have a transaction history from back then, but you would probably have to pay for it. 

Old_Lifer

I have absolutely no idea how long the banks keep records of closed accounts.

In my day we kept policy records for seven years after the policy had ended.  In practice getting rid of old records was something which was rarely done and we often had records going back far longer.

antoniashaw

Thank you everyone for your thoughts. We took the cheque to Santander and they are investigating .....