Financial gifts in advance made out to Mr & Mrs... help!

Hi AJ

I doubt you have any option but to wait until after you're married. My last job was in a bank and as far as I'm aware it is against the law/fraud to pay a cheque into an account that is not made out to the account holders. I would say you will have to wait it out!

Hi AJ, if I remember rightly, there may be a timelimit on how long you have before you can cash a cheque, I may be wrong though.

The time limit is 6 months on a personal cheque

We have a joint account in my maiden name and they accepted a cheque for Mr & Mrs. Can you pay it into your account?

If not you will have to hold on to it until after you get the accounts changed.

You will have 6 months until the issuer cancels the cheque before you cash it.

(we didn't want to cash any cheques in advance of the wedding as it didn't feel right and had one cheque bounce and one cancelled!!)

Unless we set up a joint account on our honeymoon, we won't be able to do anything about it until October - which if theres a 6 month limit does give us time thankfully.

I guessed we'd just have to "sit on it" until then - which goes to prove that people don't read invitations because it said that we don't have a joint account yet

AJ – dependent on who is taking whose name/if that’s happening (I’ll take assumptions on this one) are you not already Mr X? Therefore can you not set up an account as Mr X, and add Mrs X upon marriage? Then you can pay the cheque in as part of Mr X?

Not sure exactly, but I would have thought that as it is addressed to Mr and Mrs X, then Mr X or Mrs X could put that into their account?

It’s a tricky one for sure!

Given that there's a 6 month limit and you've indicated previously any cash gifts received are to go towards a house deposit, I'm not sure where the harm is in waiting until having your joint account?

I am indeed Mr X (muhahaha, waving from my underground lair, sitting in a big leather chair and stroking my cat) and my b2b who is Miss W will become Mrs X, so if we can just open a new account for wedding gifts and put them in there regardless of if they're made out to Mr and Mrs, then add her to the account after September.

She will be taking my name as is traditional, there has never been any thought of anything else happening.

If it's in an account somewhere it can be earning interest, even if it's only pennies, which has to be better than earning nothing surely?

It's a gift to celebrate your nuptials - until that day it should be earning your generous contact interest ?

No, we discussed the issue quite early on in our engagement and she had no hesitation in taking my name, "as is tradition", on our marriage. It was never an argument, I didn't need to pressure her into taking my name or anything, it was just accepted by both of us that it would happen. I was responding to the "assumption" made in the thread in one reply, to confirm that the assumption of becoming Mr and Mrs was correct.

I agree with Mrs C , we have 4 cheques now, which we will cash after we are married. I wouldnt worry about the pennies in interest AJ!

Depending on the amount, your bank may allow you to pay it into your account now.

We received some cheques for our wedding, some with the guests rsvp card, some on the day. Some were made out to my husband only, but we had 5 or 6 that were made out to Mr & Mrs (with us having no joint account). My bank, upon me providing a copy of our marriage certificate and changing my surname with them, allowed us to pay in all but 1. The only cheque they wouldn't allow us to pay in was for £500, the others were all for £50 or less each, so i am assuming that they have some sort of discretion over whether they will do it for small amounts? My husband did have to sign the back of the cheques and accept that once paid into my account, should i do a runner with the money, he would have no claim to it as far as the bank was concerned !!

Just to forewarn you, my husband's bank did decline us a joint account, whereas mine set one up no problems.

How can they decline setting up an account with them if you both have the required paperwork?

They can decline anyone for any reason.

I was declined a current account by Halifax but allowed one from Bank of Scotland - technically the same bank and was only agreed when I argued their flimsy case about credit ratings.

H paid a joint cheque into his personal account before we had a joint married-name account. However, my account wouldn't accept one even though it was him paying it in so worth asking the bank the question rather than us...

I bank with Barclays, if that makes any difference. I'll pop into a branch next week and see what their opinion is

Barclays accepted ours... maybe they are just not fussy!

If it's just the one small cheque then we can - but as it's likely others will start rolling in soon, I don't really want hundreds (or thousands, you never know...) of pounds worth of uncashed cheques sitting around at home, for obvious reasons. I doubt if we'd get any actual cash given to us yet but that can just go in an account anyway.

This is why we put on our website that any cheques are to be made payable to my parents!!

That will be because Halifax and BoS are still independent entities even though part of the same company (HBOS plc and now Lloyds Banking Group). They have independent T&Cs etc and I can't say anymore without breaking company confidentiality rules.

In response to AJ's OP:

- yes, a cheque can only be cashed within 6 months from the date on it.

- banks vary - some will accept to pay it into your account if your OH is present and signs the cheque on the back (endorses) in front of them, showing ID. But of course, with her not being Mrs yet that won't be possible until wedding takes place.

- Can you not ask those who sent it to re-write it (especially if you have mentioned in your invites that you do not have a joint account)? I know it may sound rude, but if you had asked already for money in lieu of gifts, and if people know you may struggle and benefit from the money earlier, then why not?

We have received £200 from my ex-husband's aunt and her three grown up children (£50 from each couple) and we were gobsmacked as you don't expect the family of your ex to give you wedding gifts for your second wedding - but we remained very good friends. They knew we were struggling, especially with my OH having lost his job, and they can't come to the wedding (they live abroad) so when they came over in April they gave us the money and said if we need to use it now to pay deposits etc we were welcome. We have not spent it yet but it will pay almost entirely for the flowers. They didn't want to do a cheque for exactly that reason: I am not Mrs O yet. So they went to a cash machine and gave us cash!!