[soweak.]

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" Checks can legally take 10 BUISNESS days to be sucessfully credited to your account"

Would you please tell me exactly what this statement means .

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Sure!

Lets first talk about how a check actually clears. First you deposit it into your local banks ATM, Branch, Night Deposit, et al. That check then goes to your banks check processing center, where it is sorted by which region the checks issuing bank is located. lets say you bank at Bank of California which is in Region 12 (I'm not sure, but for arguments sake this will work), lets say you deposit a check from your friend who banks with Bank of New York which is Region 1. That check goes to your bank processing center and then is physically transported to the other bank in New York. Unless these two banks share a similar clearing house (non-local banks tend to not unless they are nationwide, for arguments sake we will assume they do not clearing house at the same place) they have to first go to the Federal Reserve, where each bank credits and debits eachother for the amount of each check. In this case the Bank of California would recieve a credit for your check from Bank of New York, BEFORE THE NEW YORK BANK HAS EVEN SEEN THE CHECK! After the fed, the check are then physically shipped to the issuing banks so that the bank may debit the correct account.

This is the point where 95% of the time you are credited with the funds (coinciding with the bank getting a credit through the fed).

Because banking laws are archaic and designed to protect the banks, a check drawn off a bank not in the same region as the bank of first deposit can take 7-10 buisness days to complete this process. Any check over $5000 is considered a large deposit and is always on the later spectrum.

when the check arrives at the issuing bank, the bank will then debit the account accordingly. if a check is counterfeit, NSF, drawn of a closed account, payment stopped, or any other reason to refuse payment, it is returned in the exact same fashion, only in reverse.

Now you can see why check actually take so long to "clear" and longer to "return." If you actually waited the whole length of this process, you'd be waiting 2-3 weeks to recieve true funds. This is why banks choose to let you access these funds when they recieve the credit from the fed, because 95% of the time this is the end of thier interaction with the process.

Endorsement issues, breaches of warranty, and other late returns are a whole nother bag that I can get into if you want, but this wil lay the groundwork for the context of your questions.