Unclaimed Property Blog

Like many other cities and states, Philadelphia, PA is trying to locate owners of unclaimed property and funds to return the unclaimed money to the correct owners.

“Right now we have, in the five county region meaning, Philadelphia and the four suburban counties, Bucks, Montgomery, Chester and Delaware, as much as, more than, 308-million dollars,â€? said PA State Treasurer Robert P. Casey Jr.

Why does this unclaimed money and property end up with the state? The law requires it. After a certain amount of time, dormant bank accounts, uncashed paychecks, insurance payouts, you name it, must be handed over.

About $920,000 in tax refunds are due to residents in Utah. It is the goal of IRS Comminssioner Mark W. Everson to get this money back into the hands of the people it belongs to.

According to information provided by the IRS, refunds can go astray for a number of reasons, but they usually are lost when a taxpayer moves or changes address and doesn’t notify the IRS or the U.S. Postal Service. Utah taxpayers who have moved since filing their last tax return are those that should look into this free money give-a-way.

This week, the Montana Department of Revenue spent almost $10,000 to place 8,824 names in legal advertisements in daily newspapers across the state to contact the money’s owners.

Under a program set up by Montana law in 1963, unclaimed or abandoned money eventually gets turned over to the state. The state will hold it in trust for perpetuity.

To date, the state of Montana has collected about $47 million, and $16 million has been returned.

Check your family tree, a long-gone distant relative might be on this list. If you can provide proof of heritage, you could become richer.

The state of New Hampshire is looking for the owners of unclaimed cash and stocks. The amounts are $7.9 million in cash and 300,000 shares of stock.

Insurance Companies that converted from a mutual company have stock that was not given to the owners of the insurance policy. Some of the named companies are John Hancock Financial Services, Inc., MetLife Inc., Prudential Financial Inc., and Nationwide Provident.

Per the article the state’s portfolio of abandoned stock is worth more that $20 million. You could be owed money from these conversions. How much found money do you want to find? Search the Found Money search and find out.

MSN Money columnist Liz Pulliam Weston enlightens her readers on how your safe-deposit box could become “abandoned” and turned over to the state as unclaimed property.

Ever wonder how it is that a state can have such a high amount of unclaimed cash and property? Well, Ms. Weston discloses how a bank can claim your safe-deposit box is abandoned. Once claimed to be abandoned it then becomes the property of the state. The result is the contents of your safe-deposit box is now unclaimed money or property. She gives excellent insight as to how this happens and how you can protect yourself from this.

People were waiting in line to see if they were due money from the state of Califorina. It resulted in CA State Controller Steve Westly distrubuting 5 checks totalling $8,000 in the Fresno area. This is part of his statewide campaign to give $4.8 billion in unclaimed property back to rightful owners.

You may be a rightful owner and claim your share of the $4.8 billion.