Unclaimed Property Blog

Sometimes the things you do not know can hurt you. What is your bankruptcy IQ? Read on for some information that may help increase your understanding of bankruptcy.

Bankruptcy isn’t something you like to think about, but you may find yourself considering it at some point in your life. How do know if it’s the right thing for you?

Let’s start with information on what it is. Bankruptcy is a federal court process that helps individuals and businesses repay their debts under the protection of the bankruptcy court (Chapter 13 Bankruptcy) or wipe their debts out altogether (Chapter 7 Bankruptcy). When you file for bankruptcy, an automatic stay goes into effect which prohibits your creditors from taking action to collect the debt without the approval of the court.

There are very important things one should know about copying a will. The following information may be useful to you so you should continue reading.

Did you know that when you are copying an original will you would never remove the staples. Why? If the original will appears to be tampered with, its validity may be questioned in probate court.

In most towns there is someone that is looking for people that owe money and looking for people who have lost money. Wayland, MA isn’t any different. Read on for some laws that the state imposes on found money.

Town Administrator Fred Turkington works to track down Wayland residents who owe taxes to the town while Treasurer Paul Keating is doing just the opposite.

Each year Treasurer Keating is required by law to try to locate people whom the town owes money, individuals and businesses who never cashed checks the town has written.

When you read about people claiming cash you may wonder “How could they lose it?”. This news may add to your concern since we are talking about a baseball team able to claim money the state is holding.

According to the Boston Herald, the Boston Red Sox will be claiming $7,288 in abandoned property that Massachusetts State Treasurer Tim Cahill is holding for the team.

This is the type of story you would like to see in the headline news regularly. A young woman doing a good deed has found cash.

Trista Wright was spending her spring break helping others by cleaning out hurricane-damaged homes when she discovered some unusual papers among the debris.

She started raking the unusual papers out of the air conditioner vent. Looking at it she thought it was garbage and decided to shovel it up, changed her mind and bent down to pick it up. Upon further inspection she discovered it was a stack of $100 bills; and then more and more kept coming. The unofficial count puts the cash at more than $30,000.

Kentucky has given the answer to that question. It came about because some Kentucky tobacco growers have unclaimed money waiting for them in state coffers.

In June, as part of the Phase II Tobacco Settlement program, checks totaling more than $863,000 were returned to the state. Approximately 5,000 checks were returned because no forwarding address was left, the forwarding address had expired, the recipient was deceased or the post office box was closed.

The checks were among 164,000—totaling $114 million—that were sent out.

The June checks will expire this year (June 2006). If their recipients do not collect, the money will go into an unclaimed property fund. After three years, the state may spend the money.

It did not seem so long ago that the plastic credit card was new and innovative. Some creditors are looking to revamp it so that the consumer can spend less time at cash registers. Like anything new, it does bring forward questions about safety and spending habits.

Chase wants you to ‘Blink’, MasterCard wants you to ‘Tap and Go’ and American Express wants you to ExpressPay. What does all this mean for you?

It means that you can have incremental time saved when making purchases. The retailer may lose sales if the lines are too long or too slow. Proponents say it will save time for consumers and could make money for merchants.

Steve Westlly the CA State Controller has been traveling through the state giving money away. He is the person possibly holding your share of California’s $4.8 billion worth of unclaimed property.

San Francisco residents were recently urged to check for unclaimed money as Controller Steve Westly continued a campaign urging residents to check whether the state is holding any of their money in the form of unclaimed property.

The state has $4.8 billion worth of bank balances and miscellaneous items whose owners could not be located after three years, according to the controller’s office.

Scattered throughout the Boston, MA region are hundreds of lucky people who are eligible to claim at least $10,000 each.

The government says it wants to return the money, but the owner of record has been deemed unreachable, with no known address. The Globe South did manage to find some of these lucky people.

The state treasurer’s office has 1.5 million unclaimed bank accounts, bonds, insurance policies and safe deposit boxes with a total worth of about $1.8 billion. Dig deep into your memory and if you feel you may be someone that fits into having an account as mentioned, claim it, it is free money.

About $30,000 in unclaimed cash will be moved into the city’s general fund if the rightful owners don’t claim it by the end of the month. To claim this money contact the Oklahoma City Police Department.

The found money turned into the police ranges from one penny to $3,317. Police do make every attempt to return this money to the owners prior to adding it to the city’s budget. There isn’t a standard amount, it is just money that the police had turned in to them for various reasons.