There are many reasons you might have unclaimed funds (abandoned accounts, uncashed checks, misspelled names, incorrect addresses, misplaced inheritance and trusts, etc), and your state is required to hold your property until you claim it.
They will not seek you out, and most people are completely unaware they may have lost funds or property being held by the state.
Every state has an official (.gov) website where you can check whether you have unclaimed property and submit a claim. Just search ‘[my state] unclaimed property’.
e: make sure you go to the official state website; I just noticed some state search top results aren’t the official (.gov) website.
e2: also, check every state you’ve lived in. Moving state is one of the major reasons this happens, and your unclaimed funds will not move to a new state with you.
e3: if you find unclaimed funds, please comment! I’m fascinated to know, no matter how large or small.
The legal term for this is escheat. Good recommendation is to check the escheat site for every state you’ve lived in once a year on your birthday.
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I only ever had $30 in escheat (unclaimed funds). Moved states and my old electric company didn’t forward a refund for part of last month.
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If you have any investment accounts check them regularly. Heard a crazy story on the news about a guy who hasn’t checked his brokerage account or read any statements in so long that his home state claimed the assets and liquidated them. Lost out on years of gains. Link here
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Hey thanks. I just made $2.86! And my mom is owed $1.44!
I only need about tree fiddy
I got $380. Not life-changing, but nice anyhow.
Usually this can happen when you are owed money by an institution (bank, insurance, stocks, etc) and you either dont claim it, dont get the check, forget about it, or it happens outside of your knowledge (e.g. grandparents set up an account). In the US, you can usually check with your state’s Comptroller’s office. For example, NY has unclaimed funds under the office of the New York state comptroller
I’d reccomend going directly to the state .gov website and looking there or making sure you have the state website if following a link. They will let you search by name for unclaimed accounts, and then after choosing the one you want to claim, it will ask for ssn, dob and name, etc. If they can verify that information, you get a check in the mail. Ive gotten a few hundred from old insurance that probably settled some account after I’d switched.
Yeah, make sure it’s .gov. Don’t go through a middle man that does the same thing while charging a fee.
I found about 8K for my mom a few years ago doing that.
Those bastards demanding my money instead of demanding the company try again to send it to me.
I found out about this because of this letter from Amazon – it was the first letter I saw from them, and will apparently be the last. No idea why this amount is different than any other amount that just goes into my account, but whatever.
If you find unclaimed funds, please comment! I’m fascinated to know, no matter how large or small.
I looked and found 6 unclaimed funds for my brother and my parents in the state I’m originally from. They were all under $100. Probably won’t know exact $ until they make a claim. The types of funds include: insurance premium refunds, customer overpayments from banks, a refund from an ISP, and a trust liquidation.
I’ve had 18 shares of Morgan Stanley in unclaimed funds for a while. They want the shares certificate to claim it… which doesn’t make sense cause if I still had the certificate, I’d just sell them. But anyway, your post encouraged me to get in touch with MS investor relations just now to see if I can do anything about it. It would be almost $2,500 if it works.
My wife got some postal mail about unclaimed funds that looked bogus. After several repeats, we found out that it was due to her uncle passing away intestate.
My wife’s already deceased father and him had mingled their finances. But another cousin had found out first and had already moved on cutting us out.
Fixing it has taken over a decade, but the estate finally closed last month. Our share total was around $350k. The thieving cousin probably got away with double that. But hey, a free windfall for retirement.
Unfortunately, I’m out of work so we’re living off of that money now.
I’m glad you finally got it sorted. That’s a hellish process, and I hope you can at least relax now.
Well I still need to find a job. ASAP.
I got $9.31 from the ISP I had in college! My sister-in-law had $82 from the same ISP. Seems to be a pattern.
I’ve never had unclaimed funds, but I have been the person who submits funds that have been unclaimed to the state. I work at a law firm that handles a lot of settlements, and sometimes, people are issued a large portion of the settlement while we wrap up a few other things on the case. Once those are taken care of, I reach out to our client to give them whatever funds remain.
But sometimes, I can’t find that person no matter how hard I search. Sometimes, our client disagrees with the additional amount that they are receiving and refuses to cash their check. After a certain number of years, and after every possible attempt to give our client their money has been made, I have it sent to the state.
That’s fascinating, I assumed it would be the default business to business debt, where most companies would basically hold onto the money until they’re asked for it, and just make damn sure they’ve accounted for it
I’m not a money guy, I just remember hearing some project managers talk about it and thought it was an interesting thing I’ve never considered, so there might be more to it
Can you tell me a bit about the legality of it? Is it just a matter of balancing your books to avoid getting in trouble, or is it different for individuals than businesses, or am I missing some piece of context and jumped to the wrong conclusion?
Just in general the motivation for you to do it that way for my own edification, I had no idea this kind of process existed
In my line of work, it’s a legal thing and a balancing the books thing. The business can’t legally keep the money because it is being held in trust for that particular person, and only that person is allowed to get those funds (unless they die, then it becomes part of their estate). We can’t just wait a certain number of years and say ha! you didn’t get your funds in time, and now they’re mine!
While we have the funds in trust, the case isn’t fully closed as far as our accounting department is concerned. Accounting doesn’t want uncashed checks out there and doesn’t like the idea of holding onto client funds indefinitely because they have to keep track of all of that, and we’ve had something like 40,000 clients in the last 30-40 years. Their goal is to get that account down to zero so there are no funds for that client left in their account.
At a certain point, if we can’t hunt that person down, we have to get this money off our books. Otherwise, if it was legally allowed, we could be stuck holding these funds for decades and having to manage them that whole time. In my particular state, businesses legally have to submit it as unclaimed property after 5 years. The goal was to have all these funds in one location so people don’t have to search at a bunch of different places to find unclaimed funds. Really, it’s a benefit to both the business and the people searching for their funds. We get to clear it off the books, and they have a one-stop shop for receiving any unclaimed funds. It sounds like different types of funds have different waiting periods. I believe the department of revenue also makes efforts to find the owner of those funds.
Lots of different businesses use this system. Say you have a savings account out there somewhere that you completely forgot about, so it’s been sitting there with no activity for years. Since then, maybe you’ve moved or gotten a new phone number. If the bank sends you letters and emails and calls you but still can’t get in contact after 5 years, they are going to close the account and send those funds to the state. It could be submitted by an insurance company who has settlement funds or reimbursement funds for ending a policy. It could be that you overpaid on something, and the business is trying to return the difference to you, but can’t find you. Basically, if some business owes you money in any way, but can’t for some reason get it to you, they have to submit it to the state. I’m assuming it works the same if the next of kin can’t be found for an estate.
I’m not sure how the business to business funds would work, but businesses here are required to have a registered agent who is responsible for receiving subpoenas or whatever else for the business, so hunting down the owner seems like it’s a bit easier, but I’ve never worked on that side, so I don’t really know.
I just checked the 3 states i have lived in and found something from an old isp. Doesnt look like it will be much tho.
I’ve heard ISP stories several times. That’s really interesting.
I found my friend is owed $438
I got about $75 back
Why less?
It’s two separate people
Checked this in my state a few years ago, ended up getting like 50 bucks back. Took a while, I forgot about it by the time the check got here. Seemed like the state treasure was happy to have his signature prominently slapped on there.
Yes this happened to me once , I had to create an account to pay taxes on something and I found out I had like $300 on something the state didnt pay me because I moved.
Feel free to crosspost to !AskUSA@discuss.online
Canada has something similar! Look up “unclaimed funds” or “biens non réclamés” and your province/territory!
I’ve known about this for a few years, and periodically check for myself and family. So far zilch… but I keep hoping!
