Unclaimed Property Blog

Expired gift card money has been a concern this holiday season. The gift season is in full glory starting from Thanksgiving up till the New Year. The chances are that you are either the recipient of a gift or you are planning to give a gift to someone close to your heart. Gift cards are the most common form of gifts being exchanged during the holiday season.

Iowa’s Treasure Hunt has benefited many, reuniting with unclaimed money. A large number of people have already benefited from The Great Iowa Treasure Hunt program and it has already returned over $122 million in unclaimed property to more than 310,000 rightful owners of unclaimed money. In Iowa, unclaimed money was considered unrealistic and out of bounds for the most part. “We get millions of dollars in each year,” Fitzgerald stated. “We believe the best way to find people are to ask others in their community to help us. That’s why we are sending out the top 25 list.”

More states are considering the use of unclaimed money for the benefit of the state. The prolonged economic slump has forced a lot of state governments and agencies to rethink their operational and financial strategy. It is hardly surprising that the state of Delaware, like California, is fighting hard to continue the various development projects. Taking a cue from California, Delaware is trying to utilize a key source of revenue: state unclaimed money.

On Feb 7, 2011, a listing of nearly 44,000 people with unclaimed money or other property will be published in newspapers across north Texas. The office of the State Comptroller has reported that this time the traditional statewide list of unclaimed property owners has been replaced with six regional lists. The Comptroller will publish six regional unclaimed property lists in more than 30 Texas newspapers from December 2010 through April 2011.

With unclaimed assets increasing by the day, it would not be surprising that your ancestral unclaimed assets might be more than you can imagine. Like bonds, trust funds and estates, inheritance money can also be lost because of so many reasons.

Ancestral inheritance money can be because of a variety of reasons:

A deceased relative left no written will
Your relative switched funds over to another bank
Multiple address changes were done before your dear ones left this world
A contested estate was left behind or a life insurance policy that was never cashed in

Many are still weary about the truth behind unclaimed money. Even after years of constant outreach agenda and awareness programs, many of the claimants are not confident of the outcome of the search process. It is still inconceivable for a lot of people to believe that some money which they have no idea can still be retrieved. State treasuries and federal agencies are on toes to help any genuine claimant of lost funds.

The unclaimed money pile is growing at an extreme rate across all state treasuries. This is a major source of anxiety for the officials in charge of disbursing the unclaimed money. All the pillars of the government machinery are working full time towards a rapid disbursement and management of unclaimed funds, and are trying their best to locate the actual owners.

Until recently, the process of unclaimed money search was a secret only known to a very few. Now the availability of Internet and access to online documents have made sure that relevant information is available to the potential owners of these unclaimed funds. The collaborative effort between the state and federal government is ensuring that the right information is reaching the target audience at the right time.