Unclaimed Property Blog

Often you will see pop-ups on your screen regarding credit scores. You click on and you see FICO score, not credit score. What is this FICO? Is it a disease? Do I have it? Do I want to know if I have it?

It is not a disease. FICO is what the financial people refer to as your credit score. Guess they thought we would not figure that one out. FICO comes from a company that was started back in 1956 called Fair, Isaac Corporation. Fair Isaac was the creator of the credit scoring system. This system simply puts a number as your credit (FICO) score based on how good (or bad) you are at managing your debt.

CA State Controller, Steve Westly, in recent months has been going to different areas of the state announcing money to be given away. This is money that people have not claimed and was then turned over to the state as unclaimed property.

There have been stories on the internet and in newspapers of how difficult it is to find some of these people as they have not left any forwarding address. Hence, Mr. Westly traveling to different areas of the state looking for the owners.

A Miami news team is getting involved in giving away big money. If you are wondering if you may be one of the big money recipients, read on.

There is more than $1 billion in the state’s unclaimed property office. Some of it might be yours.

NBC 6’s Joel Connable reported that he has an entire list of people owed “big money,” from $10,000 to more than $100,000.

With a few clicks on a computer, NBC 6 found some owners. Alstene McKinney is one of those found owners. Her $43,000 was from an old employer, the Miami-Dade County School District. It was money from her pension that she never received.

Just like the Steelers, you could be a winner. Well actually you would be claiming what was turned over to the state as unclaimed property.

Each year the treasury department receives hundreds of millions of dollars in unclaimed property. It is responsible for finding the proper owners.

The bureau employs 121 full-time employees and six temporary workers, nearly a quarter of the 520 employees in the department.

The treasury department is custodian of unclaimed property — such as abandoned bank accounts, forgotten stocks, uncashed checks, certificates of deposit, life insurance policies, unredeemed gift cards and safe deposit boxes.

The department is obligated to carry the unclaimed property forever.

Under Washington law, funds in any account dormant for three years are forwarded to the state Department of Revenue as unclaimed property.

Does this mean you no longer have this money after three years? Patti Wilson, operations manager of the Department of Revenue’s unclaimed property section, said there’s no need to panic. “They can always get their money, there are no time limits,” she said.

The law, she said, is intended to protect consumers. “People die, people move, they forget about accounts,” Wilson said. “Otherwise, those banks continue to charge fees until there is nothing left.”

You could lose money you didn’t even know you had. Your unclaimed property used to be safeguarded by the state. Now states are enacting laws that enable them to use the unclaimed property for publicly funding statewide and legislative campaigns.

This is a true good news, bad news situation. There are needed actions being taken to remove corruption regarding funding campaigns, however, it is the citizen that will still be paying.

In Connecticut such is the case. Governor M. Jodi Rell praised the passage of the landmark campaign finance reforms for which she has been fighting for months, declaring that “Connecticut is now a national model for reform� and that “Connecticut citizens can once again be proud of the way we conduct our campaigns.�

Now you can determine if that jewelery or rare coin you “found” is really lost, mislaid or abandoned property.

Property Law: Lost, Mislaid, & Abandoned Property

In the common law of property, personal belongings that have left the possession of their rightful owners without having directly entered the possession of another person are deemed to be lost, mislaid, or abandoned, depending on the circumstances under which they were found by the next party to come into possession of them. The rights of a finder of such property are determined in part by the status in which it is found. Because these classifications have developed under the ancient and ofttimes archaic common law of England, they turn on fine and nuanced distinctions.

EBay, Massachusetts and unclaimed property do not sound like subjects that should be together, however, they were.

Various pieces of unclaimed property in Massachusetts has now become available to online consumers through government-sponsored auctions using eBay to facilitate its transactions. That is the relatinship with theses three subjects.

State Treasurer Timothy Cahill was on hand to kick off the auction and said eBay would allow the state to raise funds from all over the world, on a scale that was impossible just years ago.

Some states publish a list of rightful owners to unclaimed property, but in Massachusetts one woman found several relatives had money due them and they were not on the published list.

The woman, from Revere, MA wrote a letter to the Boston Globe. She had done a web search and found that her husband had some abandoned property coming to him. The funny thing is that his name never appeared in the published listings in the paper.

When she did further research she found a cousin and the cousin’s husband also had abandoned property but weren’t listed in the paper.

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.