Unclaimed Property Blog

It seems that everyone has different views on how to spend money. What do you do with money that has been dormant and unclaimed for many years? Recently the UK has made known how it wishes to handle its unclaimed assets.

Chancellor Gordon Brown said in his pre-budget report that banks and building societies had agreed that unclaimed assets held in accounts will be diverted to help improve youth services and financial education. It said banks could have an option to focus on their local community charities.

Dormant accounts will be defined as those untouched for 15 years.

There are many different rules and regulations concerning the use of gift cards. Will it expire is the most common question regarding gift cards. Another concern is if there is a service fee. Then that one lingering question—when the card has expired and was not used, who has ownership of the money?

Q: Can a business that has issued a gift certificate for a product or service put an expiration date on it after receiving payment in full?

A: Yes, businesses do have this right.

On Tuesday December 13th, CashUnclaimed.com Founder, Mr. Bill McIntosh, donated his unclaimed cash to ensure that the Whittier Women’s and Children’s Crisis Shelter have a happier holiday season. Mr. McIntosh discovered he had unclaimed money after a recent search on his newly updated website, www.cashunclaimed.com.

An estimated $25 billion of unclaimed money is sitting unbeknownst to the moneys’ owners, while many Americans could use financial assistance this Christmas. In the spirit of spreading joy and love for the holidays, CashUnclaimed contacted the owners of unclaimed property and requested a donation of the found money to this women and children’s shelter. Several of those contacted did make a donation to this worthy cause as it does provide a hotline, crisis shelter and protection, meals, clothing and much more to battered women and children.

A New Jersey woman has discovered that her grandparents had an IRA account that dates back to 1990 or even earlier. She has questions on this so she asked John W. Schoen, Senior Producer at MSNBC. Here is what was asked and his response:

Q: My grandmother handed me some IRA deposit receipts/certificates that belong to herself and my grandfather. My grandfather’s certificates are from Chemical Bank and are dated 1983-1987. My grandmother has one receipt dated 1990. I’ve called Chase Bank and all a representative could tell me was, “...maybe she could have rolled the monies over into another account…” because he did not see and IRA accounts in either name.

Ever wonder exactly what the State Controller does? You read about giving away money, financial status of the State and you hear his/her name, but do you know what their job is? Here is what is listed under the responsibilities of the Controllor’s office, taken from the website of California Controller, Steve Westly:

Controller Steve Westly is the Chief Financial Officer of California, the sixth largest economy in the world. He helps administer $300 billion in state pension funds and serves on 57 state boards and commissions. These are charged with duties ranging from protecting our coastline to helping build hospitals. The Controller is the state’s independent fiscal watchdog, providing sound fiscal control over more than $100 billion in receipts and disbursements of public funds a year, offering fiscal guidance to local governments and uncovering fraud and abuse of taxpayer dollars.

Yes it is true, Colorado has given their attempts to return unclaimed property and money to citizens a name; the Great Colorado Payback. Keeping in the fun of things, last Friday fans attending the big CU/Nebraska football game had a chance to claim their share of more than $300 million in unclaimed property currently held by the state.

The Great Colorado Payback program allows Coloradoans to claim lost or forgotten property such as checking accounts, savings accounts and safe deposit boxes abandoned for more than five years, which the state has taken for safekeeping.

There are about 3,000 veterans statewide who are owed unclaimed property. The state recently began sending letters to the veterans that are owed their share.

Where is this money from? Cash, securities, escheated estates (those given to the state when no heirs exist) and contents of abandoned safe deposit boxes are regularly turned over to the Office of the State Treasurer. The treasurer’s office then attempts to find the owners. It publishes unclaimed property lists and it maintains a searchable database of unclaimed property online. But many people still never realize they have anything coming to them.

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.

It is the duty of Texas Controller Carole Keeton Strayhorn to locate the owners of $1.3 billion the state is holding in unclaimed assets.

Sometimes when you see a coin on the ground you pick it up. But if you take the time to look up your name on a particular website, www.CashUnclaimed.com, you could find a whole lot more than a single cent.

Right now more than 100,000 Texans have money being held for them by the state because for whatever reason they couldn’t be found to get the check. But claiming the money now is as easy as jumping on a computer and spending five minutes of your time.

Millions of Californians have made hefty contributions of cash, stocks and personal property to state coffers without knowing it. The reason behind this is that lawmakers have been pilfering from the state’s unclaimed-property cache and using the proceeds to help balance the budget.

Approximately $896 million in unclaimed property was turned over to the state for safekeeping last year under a 46-year-old program designed to protect forgotten or abandoned assets. Less than $239 million of that was eventually claimed; most of the rest went into the state’s general fund.