Unclaimed Money is Out There. Is any of it yours?
Every year in virtually every state there are items of value and money that are left unclaimed. They may be from bank accounts that have sat for decades without deposits or withdrawals. Sometimes they may be valuable items that are part of an estate that the recipients never claimed or may have even rejected for one reason or another.
These items may range from rare lamps and turn of the century watches to a baby grand piano that a recipient could not accept because they had no room for it in their small apartment and they could not afford the moving costs to move the thing across the country. This becomes unclaimed property that will eventually escheat to (become the property of) the state by law if it remains unclaimed for a specified amount of time.
Could any of this be yours? Certainly it could!
How many distant relatives to you have out there who may have thought about you in their Last Will and Testament but you may have you lost touch with them over the years. Or perhaps you had a small bank account that only had $100 in it when you were a kid but you had so many other pressing matters that you forgot all about this interest bearing account and now it is worth thousands of dollars.
Strangely, this happens all the time.
Most people just forget about these things and never bother to check on them. The idea is this. Hey, if there were this valuable property out there either I would know about it or someone would be contacting me to let me know that it exists so I could claim it. That is one big mistake to make. First, how many times have you moved over the past 20 years. Some of us have moved 10 or even 20 times and forwarding orders with the post office have long since expired.
What is a bank going to do if you forgot about an account when you were a kid? Do you think they care if you find that money and take it out? Hell no! The banks want to keep that money in their possession as long as possible so they can invest it an make more money on it while providing the account with a nominal amount of interest.
So let's be realistic at least when it comes to forgotten bank accounts. No one is going to be jumping hurdles and hiring a private detective to track you down over the years to tell you that $5,000 is sitting in a bank account for you. It benefits the bank for that money to stay there as long as possible when it remains unclaimed. The bank continues to use it to make money and finally it escheats to the state. Then the monies are either withdrawn from the bank or they continue to be invested in that financial institution until the bureaucracy of the state and all its paperwork manages to remove the funds from that financial institution.
Ultimately, that bank or other financial institution where those monis are held is going to hold onto that money until it is forced to give it up since it promotes that financial institution's long-term stability.
One aspect of these unclaimed properties and funds that is usually disregarded is the concept of lineage. There are quite a few people each year who die without having a last will and testament and without a current spouse but still have children.
What happens when you have a person who dies under these circumstances? The laws of intestacy take over and the law determines who is entitled to properties and monies that have not been provided for by a Last Will and Testament. Essentially, if you die without a Will, the laws of the state determine the order in which persons from your lineage stand in line to inherit or take possession of these unclaimed items and funds. Imagine that good old Uncle Joe dies. Uncle Joe didn't have a Will when he died. Joe was kindly enough but he was rather eccentric and therefore he was somewhat ostracized from the rest of the family. When Uncle Joe died he had a bank account with just his name on it in the amount of $32,100.00. Joe also had an apartment filled with some rather unique but antique-ish furnishings that were worth a good $15,000 or so to a collector.
Since Joe had not bothered to create a Last Will and Testament to dispose of his monies and his other valuables, so a Probate Estate was opened in the Town of Johnston Rhode Island where Joe resided at the time of his death. Under the laws of intestacy, the Administrator of the Probate Estate was then appointed and charged to locate any living heirs by lineage who might be entitled to Joe's property and his bank account. As I mentioned, Joe was estranged from the family.
Therefore, although it wasn't all that difficult for the Administrator to trace Joe's family lineage through 5 generations to find the only living heir at law, it proved to be an impossible task for the Administrator of the estate to locate the living heir to give him notice of the property and monies he was entitled to. Thus, the monies remained in the banking establishment and the Administrator notified the State of Rhode Island about the unclaimed funds and items.
As you can tell, it is not all that difficult for items and monies to remain unclaimed when no Last Will and Testament is created. After a statutory period of time the items and bank account would then become the property of the State of Rhode Island (at least in this example).
What a loss to your wealth building if you failed to even check to see if a relative may have left you some funds somewhere. Families are often further extended than one imagines and all it takes is enough deceased people in the lineage of the decedent to place you in the position of being able to receive unclaimed funds or property.
Unclaimed monies and properties total in the millions of dollars each year and eventually belong to the state or federal monies. Are you entitled to any monies or property? It is worth it to do a search every 6 months in every jurisdiction throughout the United States to see if you are due any monies. You just never know.
Here are some websites to help you out. Go to http://www.usa.gov/Citizen/Topics/Money_Owed.shtml or http://www.unclaimed.org/ to perform searches on your name.
You may just be surprised what old Great Uncle Joe accidentally left you.
Remember SBA! See it! Believe it! Achieve it!
Authored By: Christopher A. Pearsall
Copyright 2009 GuaranteedWealth.com
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