some of you may have seen on previous posts, I’ve come to a settlement with my ex employers and as part of the compromise agreement they have to ‘pay’ my termination amount within 7 days of signing the agreement, which is Christmas eve.

The MD’s wife who does payroll and expenses is Dickensian and lives by the cheque book.

I’m fully expecting a cheque turning up on Xmas eve, which by the time it’s banked and cleared would mean i’ve not got access to the funds for a while.

if this happens surely they’ve broke the contract?? Paid to me means accessible funds??

IANAL but I’d have thought that if they hand you the cheque, or send it to arrive, on the day they’re required to “pay” you by then they’d be OK.

It’s not their problem how long your bank takes to process that payment.

On a separate note, who uses cheques these days!

Wages normally paid by BACS? I would ask for a faster payment via this system.

I believe that handing you a cheque (which will clear in the normal course of banking when presented) would satisfy that requirement, and in any case it is very unlikely that any adjudicator could be bothered with the deminimis nature of such a dispute if it arose.

Since you know cheque is the normal method of payment for this business you should have amended the contract if you required a different method.

You could have asked for cleared funds, if you knew that it was likely to be a cheque TBH. There’s still time.

Thanks Guys, I asked for BACS as payroll is paid by BACS but expenses by cheque. My solicitor even asked for it to be paid into bank and stipulated my account number but didn’t be so specific on the actual agreement itself.

May or not be an option but when I was made redundant a few years ago the redundancy payment was paid via cheque, I wasn’t going to take a risk hanging around so went to pay it in to my account to be told standard 5 days to clear, so I asked if I could access it quicker to be told it would clear instantly at the issuing branch, so drove 2 hours to get the money the same day.

When I was made redundant a few years ago the company was on its arse and gave me 3 cheques of roughly a third of the total each. I was also required to cash them 1 per month. The first 2 bounced and I had to call back in and get new cheques which were both issued from different banks. On the second occasion the MD actually told me to drive straight to the bank and pay it into my account asap as there was ‘definitely enough in this account at the moment’!
It all worked out ok in the end, but it was a bit frustrating at the time.

Did you get any free wine…

You can get cleared funds faster, either as described above, or your bank might charge a fee. None of which will help if it is handed you on xmas eve. Merry Christmas, etc.