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Uncashed paycheck 13 years old
Under US law, a bank is not obligated to honor a check that is more than six months old. § 4-404. BANK NOT OBLIGED TO PAY CHECK MORE THAN SIX MONTHS OLD. A bank is under no obligation to a customer having a checking account to pay a check, other than a certified check, which is presented more than six months after its date, but it may charge its customer's account for a payment made thereafter in good faith. Note the law says the bank is not OBLIGATED to honor the check, but they are not forbidden from doing so. I don't have a survey on this, but I think most banks won't honor a check after more than 6 months to a year. I've had a few occasions where early in the year someone accidentally wrote the previous year on a check, like on January 10, 2017 they dated the check January 10, 2016, and the bank has given me a hard time about cashing it. The statute of limitations to challenge payment or non-payment of a check is 6 years: § 3-118. STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS. (b) Except as provided in subsection (d) or (e), if demand for payment is made to the maker of a note payable on demand, an action to enforce the obligation of a party to pay the note must be commenced within six years after the demand.  I understand your frustration about being denied money that you presumably worked for and earned. But look at it from the other side. Suppose you wrote a check to someone, and years later they still had not cashed it. At some point you'd want to be able to clear this off your bank account. What if you want to close the account? What happens when you die? Would your heirs have to keep this account open for years ... decades ... centuries ... on the possibility that someday someone will cash this check? Realistically, there has to be SOME time limit. 6 months should be plenty of time for someone to make it to the bank with a check. If the company still exists then you could argue they have a MORAL obligation to pay you. If they have records that show that they did indeed give you this check and you never cashed it there'd be no question that you were trying to cheat them. But a moral obligation and a legal obligation are two different things. Legally, they paid you, and it's your problem that you failed to cash the check. You could talk to a lawyer, but if you live in the US, I think you are out of luck. (Of course other countries have different laws.)