Through the joy of Twitter I've learned of what might be the latest example of trying to cash a deceased's check when two friends propped up their departed buddy and attempted to collect his pension check in Carlow, Ireland at the post office.
The Twitter universe went amok with 'Weekend at Bernie' memes, and comments like a new definition of Post Mortem, but their attempt by the two didn't succeed. The Irish police arrested the two when the cashier became suspicious. The deceased was taken to the morgue, and the two friends were taken to the nick.
I immediately thought of the two guys who in 2008 plopped their deceased buddy onto an office chair and tried to wheel him into a check cashing place on Manhattan's West Side. That attempt didn't work either. A NYC detective eating at place adjacent to the check cashing place grew suspicious when a crowd started gathering around the very lifeless figure on the office chair who was outside, while one of the two was trying to arrange for his check to be cashed.
Obviously, not everyone has a check direct deposited, or at least in 2008 you weren't required to have it so. And Ireland might be a little behind the times as well, dispensing pension checks at their post offices.
My grandmother passed away in 1964. Her husband passed away in 1958. I distinctly remember Social Security checks still coming to the flower show after she passed away. Widows and widowers then, and now, get half of the spouses' benefits, in addition to their own if their are any. My grandmother never worked outside the home, so she wasn't getting anything that was primarily hers.
As I grew older I was impressed that my grandfather was getting anything. He was always self-employed with first a shoe shining parlor, then a flower shop. I can't imagine anyone in that family keeping up with the paperwork of paying into the fund. I never saw any evidence that anyone was keeping the books. There were no books. Perhaps in that era you could get bare bones benefits even if you never contributed. I don't know.
My grandmother's check was $47, hardly a tidy sum even in 1960s dollars. I do remember the check arriving at the flower shop for several months after she passed away. I asked my father if didn't he need to have them stop the checks. He said he'd take care of it.
Money was always something my father needed, so I have no doubt that for at least those few months when the checks were coming that he was cashing them. Banks didn't care about double endorsements then, so it wouldn't have been hard to deposit the checks into an account that was not my grandmother's. He probably cashed the check at some bar and they deposited it with a double endorsement.
I remember stories the old timers would tell at the flower shop of some slob who passed away in a rooming house and his friends would immediately descend on his room and feel his mattress for hidden cash. The guys that were passing away in the '60s had been through the depression and didn't trust banks. Banks failed. Cash was king.
When a neighbor passed away in Flushing my father advised his widow not to wear black when closing out the bank account. The rights of survivorship laws were different then and even a small estate was sent into probate court. If a teller got a whiff that a widow was closing an account, then the account would be frozen. A different era.
The Twitter scroll on the Ireland story was filled with reference to 'Weekend at Bernie's' and other stories similar to mine of my father of relatives that kept cashing checks for years after someone's demise.
The best Tweet other than someone saying it was a new definition of post-mortem, was perhaps the one that claimed that that's how voting for Trump was accomplished.
The majority that was created in Illinois in the 1960 presidential election that gave the electoral votes to JFK was said to have been engineered by Chicago's Mayor Daley, who famously knew how to keep deceased people on the voting roles and have them vote from the beyond.
The past is never dead; it's not even past.
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