Unclaimed Property Blog

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.

Officials with the Hawaii State Department of Budget and Finance will be at the 83rd Maui County Fair to assist residents in conducting searches for unclaimed property or other found money that belongs to them. The specialists with the Unclaimed Property Program will be at the fair for all four days.

The Unclaimed Funds Program accepts and holds property from financial institutions that have been inactive and unclaimed, including back accounts, certificates of deposit, insurance payments and gift certificates. Anyone can conduct a search to find out it they have any lost money owed to them. The problem with the Hawaii unclaimed property program is that it only covers one database for the state government when there are over 54 additional databases that you need to search.

Here’s a great site that has reviews, articles and advice about all the paid online survey websites out there. It seems to be the latest craze to hit the Internet – everyone wants to get paid big money filling out surveys. I think this is possible to find these paid surveys, but I don’t really know how much money you can make.

Some sites claim you can make $250 per hour. I’m a little skeptical about that, but don’t see why you couldn’t make some extra cash on the side with it.

Imagine losing $2,000 for three years and not knowing it was gone.

That’s what a recent article published in the Daily Journal Online talks about. In the example above it was a city government who had lost $2000 and didn’t even know it. The lost money was reported to the Indiana state treasurer and there it sat for 3 years. This is not that uncommon. Many people have lost money being held by a state, local or Federal agency and they don’t even know it!

Who knows – you could be owed money and you don’t even know it.

Two months ago, the county of San Diego offered more than $1 million in refunds to hotel and motel guests who were overtaxed for their rooms. The actual amount of overcharging is over $4 million dollars, but the time limits are up on claiming some of those funds and the county is now spending much of the money.

Now, the county is attempting to return nearly $2.4 million dollars in unclaimed funds that resulted from people overpaying their property taxes.

Free money – do you want it? You would think that most people would jump at the chance. However, Three business school professors have discovered that when it comes to work most people are leaving hundreds or thousands of free dollars left on the table.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is reporting that in their study, called: “$100 Bills on the Sidewalk: Suboptimal Savings in 401(k) Plans.”, most people are not taking advantage of investment fund matching programs. This is where the employer will match any contribution you make to an investment account like a 401K retirement account.

Edgecombe County Clerk of Superior Court Carol Allen White said her office is trying to find the rightful owners of about $19,503 in unclaimed property, money and funds being held by her office.

“If satisfactory proof of claim is not presented by Oct. 1, the law requires us to submit the money to the N.C. Treasurer’s office. After we send the money to the state treasurer’s office, the rightful owners will have to contact Raleigh to get their money back.”

The state unclaimed money websites and all of the government sponsored sites related to found money are missing 90% of the lost money records and can often make you miss out on funds that you should have claimed. They simply don’t contain most of the records. It would take you 50+ hours to search all the government sites one by one. No matter what your state tells you, there is no government site that searches all the lost money databases.

The Idaho State Tax Commission is looking for people who are owed unclaimed property, and hoping they’ll call to claim the this lost money.

It’s found money and unclaimed funds for which Idaho businesses have been unable to find the rightful owners, such as payroll checks, contents of safe deposit boxes, tax refunds, stock dividends, worker’s compensation benefits and so on.

The Idaho Legislature in 1997 changed state unclaimed property law. Businesses are required to report these monies to the state tax commission and now after property that’s safeguarded by the tax commission remains unclaimed for 10 years, it will transfer to state ownership and be deposited in Idaho’s general fund.