Federal Governments Working With States to Return Unclaimed Money
Unclaimed money is at an all time high. Over burdened with the pressure of piling unclaimed money, the state is now working in coordination with the federal government to locate the rightful owners of the property. The state is launching several initiatives in the form of state treasury websites, monthly fairs, and annual press releases for the public.
The problem of state unclaimed money is increasing at an alarming rate. According to the records of the state treasuries, the amount of unclaimed assets with the agencies comes to be in billions. The states, in coordination with the federal government, are taking initiatives in the form of state run fairs and press releases that offer on the spot information and solution to the people.
With the launch of these state treasury websites, people find searching for government unclaimed money much easier and faster as the database is updated on a regular basis. These unclaimed properties were earlier held by the financial institutions like banks, and were later on passed to the states, as they were inactive for more than one year.
A recent finding shows that each state has a massive portion of unclaimed money. New York has around $10 billion dollars in form of unclaimed money, equaling 23 million inactive accounts. The states of Pennsylvania and New Jersey have $1 billion dollars each in unclaimed money, while some smaller states like Maine hold about $131 million dollars.
The programs and schemes launched by the state, along with the federal government, are showing results which can be seen in New York, which boasts about returning about $5 billion dollars to the rightful owners after the awareness programs were held there. The states are trying there best to simplify the application procedure for the people to show interest and indirectly reduce the burden from the state agencies.
Many other states, in addition to launching state fairs, are also running newspaper listing with each owners name. Most local newspapers in many different counties across the country have been running list of all the unclaimed property holders in that county. This is another great way many states are trying to reach out to their citizens to inform them on unclaimed money.
There are other ways states are trying to reach out to inform the public of unclaimed money. Los Angeles aired a Channel 7 ABC news segment regarding the issue California is facing with unclaimed property. This news story proved to be successful in educating the public and creating a stronger awareness for unclaimed money.
Despite the efforts most states are taking to increase awareness for unclaimed money, the unclaimed money pile still remains high across the country.
