Understanding Assets: Checks, Promissory Notes, and Bills of Exchange
Assets
Claims are documents that incorporate a literal and independent law that can be enforced by the carrier legitimately against the debtor up to the date of maturity. Claims are also known by the name of securities, circulatory effects of commerce, etc. The elements that constitute the receivable are mainly two:
- The paper as a material is the same.
- The obligational relationship is depicted in it, which is its economic content.
These two elements give rise to meeting the debt, not only is it the sum of both, but it comes to life as a legal entity again. We will stop in the particularized study of three claims, which in our belief, are the most important: the check, the promissory note, and the bill of exchange.
I. The Check
1. Usefulness of the Check
The check is useful for the current account to the extent that it is a substitute for money. By check, the drawer has money without assuming the risks that cash holdings may cause. Moreover, since the check is a requirement of a bank current account, the bank lends the customer cash to pay for service to third parties without first seeking the withdrawal. The bank provides the client with an accounting service because it facilitates the verification of compliance with its obligations, which are paid through the use of checks.
The existence of the account can be determined, if necessary, obtaining an interest in the money deposited (Article 9º DFL 707 of 1982). For the bank, the main advantage is the ability to check a service that assumes the continuation of a current account by the client. The bank uses the money from deposits in current accounts, knowing that its holders will not go en masse to withdraw existing funds. Thus, the bank conducts credit operations assets, for example, placing deposits in loans to other customers.
Finally, to check the national economy is an advantage because the emission of the same under the current account deposits originates the call money, bank money, or scriptural money. For every dollar deposited in banks, they can lend a greater amount, so that, with certain limitations, the check is one of the means the state uses to fulfill the objectives of monetary policy.
2. Definition of a Check
In Article 10, inc. 1 of the Act and Banking Checking Accounts Checks, notes on the subject that “the check is a written order and turned against this bank to pay, your submission, the all or part of the funds that the drawer may be available at current account.
The legal provision seems questionable, since it only highlights the intrinsic relationship between the drawer and drawee bank, leaving betrayed that if any of the assumptions of this relationship is not fulfilled the check is no longer such, it is not effective. As already noted, the event is not met because the intrinsic current account does not exist, has expired, or is not provided with adequate funds available and timely deposited, the drawer remains linked to the beneficiary, who by common shares or executive civil and criminal actions may compel it to comply with the payment of any sum of money. So that the check protested by the bank retains its title character credit to make it effective against the drawer.
For us, the check is a formal document containing an unconditional order spinners to your paying bank, to be filed, a sum of money, forcing him legitimate with carrier in all those cases where the bank does not meet.
The merit of the legal definition is to emphasize that the check is a payable-on-demand document and presentation to the bank and that any contrary indication shall be deemed not written. If a check presented for payment before the date indicated as the date of issue is payable from the day of presentation. So the post-dated check or a check has no statutory date by which the bank pays or protests on the day of presentation for payment.
Hence, the fundamental difference between the check and the bill of exchange, for while the former is a means of payment in sight, the second is a credit instrument, the maturity may be deferred in time.
3. Laws Applicable to the Check
In our country, the check is governed by Decree-Law No. 707, published in the Official Journal of August 7, 1982, the revised text setting, coordinated and systematized by the Law of Checking Accounts, and Checks.