Remember how good it feels when you fish out a $1 or $10 bill from a pocket of an old pair of jeans or purse? How would you feel if you were to walk into hundreds or even thousands of dollars of money you had but had forgotten about? That money is known as unclaimed property, and believe it or not, the government is actively working to give it back to the rightful owners.
What is unclaimed property?
According to the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators (NAUPA), “unclaimed property (sometimes referred to as abandoned) refers to accounts in financial institutions and companies that have had no activity generated or contact with the owner for one year or a longer period.” Representing one of the original consumer protection programs, every U.S. state, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands have unclaimed property programs to find the owners of forgotten assets. NAUPA is the national association of the state unclaimed property programs. Databases of unclaimed property are maintained at the state level. And the good news is there is no time limit to claim most abandoned property.
Unclaimed property may present itself in the form of:
- Savings or checking accounts
- Stocks
- Dividends or payroll checks that were not cashed
- Refunds
- Traveler's checks
- Trust distributions
- Unredeemed money orders or gift certificates (in some states)
- Insurance payments or refunds
- Life insurance policies
- Annuities
- Certificates of deposit
- Customer overpayments
- Utility security deposits
- Contents of safe deposit boxes.
How did my forgotten property end up with the state?
Once considered abandoned, the property (for example, money or contents of a safe deposit box) is turned over to the state of your last known address. The state holds the money until you or your heirs claim it. Since the states can’t keep the inventory contained in all safe deposit boxes, the contents of those boxes may be sold at periodic auctions, but the funds obtained from the sales are held until the rightful owners come forward to claim them.
Consider this:
On a national level, there is almost $33 billion in unclaimed property, including:
- $15 billion worth of unclaimed savings bonds that stopped earning interest
- $133 million in unclaimed pension funds, which means that there are about 32,000 people out there who may have pension money sitting around.
In the state of Florida alone, since the program’s inception in 1961 and through the end of 2008 fiscal year, the Florida Department of Financial Services’ Bureau of Unclaimed Property reported the following:
- $3.1 billion received in unclaimed property
- 1.75 million paid claims totaling $1.2 billion
- 7.8 million claimable accounts in unclaimed property database.
You might have received a letter from a company or some asset locators stating that you have unclaimed property and for a fee they would help you recover it. While this could be a legitimate service, they are asking you to pay for something you can do for free. And you should be mindful that there are a lot of unclaimed property scams across the country. So before signing any contracts with a company of this type, we suggest you contact the unclaimed property office in your state first.
So how can you search for your lost treasure?
- You may contact the state unclaimed property program directly. The simplest way is to go to NAUPA’s website at www.unclaimed.org. From there click on the state where you think you might have unclaimed property. Follow the state instructions on how to search and how to file a claim if you should find your property.
- Or you could search most unclaimed property records at once in the combined database endorsed by NAUPA at www.missingmoney.com. Keep in mind though that not all states participate in this joint database. Currently this database contains records from 38 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. Florida is one of the participating states.
How else can you research your rightful-but-long-forgotten property?
In addition to www.missingmoney.com and www.unclaimed.org search tools, there are other sources you can use to search unclaimed property.
They include:
- Internal Revenue Services website. You can search for the undelivered tax refund checks by going to www.irs.gov. If you search for the word “refund’ (see the search box in the upper right corner), you should be taken to a web page called “Where’s my Refund.” Start there.
- Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. (PBGC). When a company transfers its pension plan to PBGC, the company sometimes is unable to locate all plan participants and hence is unable to give them the benefits. PBGC continues to look for them through their "Missing Participants" service. To search the PBGC database, go to www.pbgc.gov, then click on the “Workers & Retirees” tab. There you will locate the “Find Missing Participants” link.
- Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Some financial institutions, insured by the FDIC, were closed by different regulatory agencies between Jan. 1, 1989 and June 28, 1993. If you think you might have had funds with any of them, check at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation website at www.fdic.gov. Click on the “Consumer Protection” tab, and then on the “Banking & Your Money” link. There you will come across the “Search for Unclaimed Funds” link.
- U.S. Department of the Treasury financial services website. To check on savings bonds that you might have forgotten about, go to www.treasurydirect.gov and search for them in their Treasury Hunt search. You can find the Treasury Hunt by clicking on the “Individuals” tab in the upper left corner on the main page. On this same web page you can find helpful information on what to do if your U.S. Savings Bonds have been lost.
- For additional sources on unclaimed property go to NAUPA’s website - www.unclaimed.org. The sources range from links to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (to search for unclaimed refunds on HUD/FHA mortgage insurance premiums) to the Veteran Administration’s benefits website (to search for veteran benefits owed by the government). In addition, there are links to search for the Holocaust victims’ unclaimed assets and unpaid insurance policies and links for international unclaimed property programs which include Canada, Australia, France, New Zealand, and the Swiss Bankers Association.
Finding unexpected cash isn't difficult as long as you know where to look. Hopefully the sources above will take you on a successful treasure hunt and will unlock new financial opportunities. Be sure to share the information with your friends --- they will be very grateful.