Bouncing a Check Due to its Late Deposit

A couple rented a reception hall for an event and, at the conclusion of the event, wrote a $2,000 check for the balance due. The hall did not deposit the check for several weeks, at which time the check bounced because the account was $50 short. The couple asked for a payment plan and didn't hear back. They then got a fourteen-day demand for payment, responded by trying to set up a payment plan, and got no response. Now they have been contacted by the police, who say that there is now a bad check warrant issued for the wife as she was the person who wrote the check. This occurred in New Hampshire. What should they do?

The difficulty here is not simply that the check was deposited late, and the account was $50 short (plus the overdraft fee), as it would have been easy enough to come up with the additional <$100 at that time to pay off the debt. The difficulty is that the couple spent the money that they should have reserved for the check -- and continued to spend the money even after they bounced the check. They also disregarded what would have been an explicit instruction on the 14-day notice that they needed to make good on the check or they can face criminal prosecution.

Their best option is to get a criminal defense lawyer who, with copies of their bank statements in hand, can attempt to convince a prosecutor that the original bouncing of the check was due to an oversight -- that there was >$2,000 in the checking account when the check was written, and that it remained in the account for a reasonable time thereafter.

See New Hampshire Statutes, Sec. 638:4 (Issuing Bad Checks) ("In any prosecution [for issuing a bad check], the prosecutor shall prove that the person issued or passed the check knowing or believing that the check would not be paid by the drawee.")