Finding Unclaimed Money in your State
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Each state in the US has laws designed to protect owners of lost or forgotten assets. Unclaimed property can be accounts in financial institutions and companies that have had no contact or activity with the owner for a specific period of time. Some examples of unclaimed property include checking or savings accounts, certificates of deposit (CDs), utility security deposits, insurance payments or refunds, life insurance policies, annuities, and contents of safe deposit boxes. In most states, the law requires companies to send funds from lost or abandoned accounts to the state government for safe keeping.
According to the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators, in fiscal year 2015, $3.235 billion was returned to the rightful owners by the state government unclaimed property agencies of the $7.763 billion collected.
In most cases, there is no time limit or deadline on collecting unclaimed assets. If the property owner is deceased, their rightful heirs can also make a claim. Typically, state governments invest unclaimed funds until such time as they are claimed by their rightful owners and use the interest generated to fund programs of public interest such as public education.
In the case of physical property such as the contents of safe deposit boxes, it would not be possible for state governments to hold onto the massive quantities of those physical items. So instead, they auction off those items and keep the proceeds of those auctions for the owners to claim later. If you click the link above for your state's unclaimed property website, there will often be an announcement about their auctions in case you are interested in bidding for some of those items.
If you have lived in multiple states, you can use http://www.missingmoney.com/ to perform a multi-state search.