Definition
A crossed check is a check bearing two parallel diagonal or transverse lines drawn across its face, typically on the upper left corner, sometimes with additional markings between the lines. The crossing restricts how the check may be paid: it cannot be cashed over a bank counter but must instead be deposited into a bank account. The payee or holder therefore receives payment only through the banking system, creating a traceable record of the transaction.
Two principal forms of crossing govern the scope of restriction:
1. General crossing: Two parallel lines drawn across the face of the check, with or without the words "and company" (or the abbreviation "& Co.") between them. Payment must be made only to a banker — meaning the drawee bank must pay the check through a collecting bank and cannot hand cash directly to the presenter.
2. Special crossing: Two parallel lines with the name of a specific bank written between them. The drawee bank is authorized to pay only to that named bank. This narrows the channel of collection even further than a general crossing.
The crossing is a direction to the drawee bank, not a restriction on the negotiability of the instrument itself. The check may still be transferred or endorsed; the crossing limits only the mode of payment.
Common Confusion
Crossed checks are sometimes confused with certified checks or marked checks. A certified check bears the drawee bank's own guarantee of payment; a crossing places no such guarantee on the instrument. A crossed check may be dishonored; a certified check ordinarily cannot. Separately, the practice of "crossing out" a payee's name or an endorsement on a check is an entirely different act and should not be confused with the formal instrument-crossing practice described here.
Crossed checks are also sometimes conflated with restrictive endorsements (e.g., "for deposit only"). A restrictive endorsement is placed on the back of a check by the holder; a crossing is placed on the face by the drawer or a subsequent holder, and its legal effect derives from negotiable instruments law rather than endorsement doctrine.
Why It Matters in Research
Crossing is a creature of English and Commonwealth commercial law. Researchers working in American primary sources before the late twentieth century will find crossed checks referenced in older negotiable instruments treatises and in adopted uniform law commentary, but the practice never achieved the same statutory codification in the United States that it did in England under the Bills of Exchange Act 1882 and the Cheques Act 1957. American banking custom largely absorbed the functional goals of crossing through other mechanisms — restrictive endorsements, wire transfers, and account-to-account settlement — without formalizing "crossing" as a distinct legal category in the Uniform Commercial Code.
This creates a research trap: older American legal dictionaries and treatises discuss crossed checks at length because their authors were working from English authorities, but the doctrine they describe was not fully transplanted into American statutory law. A researcher finding crossed check language in a pre-UCC American contract or instrument should look to the law of the jurisdiction actually governing the instrument, and not assume that English crossing doctrine applies.
For researchers in Commonwealth jurisdictions — the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, India — the doctrine is fully operative, and the relevant statutory scheme will govern meaning, liability of the drawee for wrongful payment, and the rights of the true owner.
In historical American sources, crossed check doctrine appears most often in discussion of foreign bills and instruments drawn on English banks, in cases involving international commercial transactions, and in general negotiable instruments treatises. The Stephen's Commentaries citation in Black's Law Dictionary (2 Steph. Comm. 118) signals that the entry draws directly from English authority, which is exactly the right frame for evaluating its applicability.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary offers a compact, serviceable definition that correctly identifies the two forms of crossing — name of a specific bank between the lines, or "and company" — and accurately states the payment restriction each imposes. The citation to Stephen's Commentaries on the Laws of England confirms the definition's English origins. Nothing in Black's entry is incorrect, but nothing is characteristically American either; the entry functions as a restatement of English commercial law.
Rapalje & Lawrence does not offer a substantive definition of crossed check; its entry cross-references the check entry and then moves immediately into unrelated terms (Crossing a Road, Crossing the Bar, Crown). This is a notable gap. Rapalje & Lawrence's failure to treat crossed checks independently is itself informative: it suggests the term was not considered sufficiently embedded in American legal practice in the late nineteenth century to warrant a standalone entry. Researchers should treat its absence as a signal about American non-adoption rather than a deficiency in the dictionary.
Neither historical dictionary addresses the drawer's ability to add the words "not negotiable" to a crossed check — a practice in English law that further restricts the transferee's title. This dimension of crossing doctrine is entirely absent from both entries and would require resort to English statutory sources or specialized treatises on negotiable instruments.
Jurisdictional Note
In the United States, the UCC does not formally recognize crossed checks as a legal category, and crossing a check creates no statutory restriction enforceable under Article 3. In the United Kingdom and most Commonwealth jurisdictions, crossing is a defined legal act with specific statutory consequences for the drawee bank, the collecting bank, and the holder. Researchers should not carry English crossed check doctrine into American disputes without confirming whether the governing law includes equivalent provisions.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Negotiable Instruments — Check 21 Act and Electronic Check Processing (The Law Mind Contracts & Commercial Law Encyclopedia)
Check Fraud and Bank Fraud (The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia)