You may be among the millions of people nationwide who have cash or assets waiting to be claimed. That is the message Thursday from state treasurers across the US in honor of Unclaimed Property Day, a reminder that your current state (or former one) wants to reunite you with what is rightfully yours.
Here’s what you need to know.
Over 30 million people in the United States have unclaimed property that they have either forgotten about or never knew was theirs, according to the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators, which is a part of the National Association of State Treasurers.
Such property can include money from inactive bank accounts, unused rebate cards or uncashed paychecks, dividend checks or life insurance policy payouts. Or it could be securities from an old safe deposit box or an inheritance.
How can someone not know where all their money is? “Any number of reasons,” said Illinois State Treasurer and NAST president Michael W. Frerichs.
While the list of possible scenarios is long, here are some common examples:
1. If you’ve moved a lot, you may have checks that were sent to old addresses and never forwarded. Or you haven’t moved for years, but a check was sent to the wrong address.
2. You may have old bank accounts from years ago that you never closed and have forgotten about.
3. You may be entitled to a payout from someone’s life insurance policy or estate and either weren’t notified about it or couldn’t be located by the company or lawyer charged with finding you.
4. Or maybe someone in your family has Alzheimer’s or another medical condition that causes them to forget about various accounts or assets.
How to find out if you have unclaimed property
NAUPA makes it easy to find out if you have unclaimed assets through its state-by-state database.
It also has put together a nationwide database on the same page, but this may not be as comprehensive as each individual state’s records.
To get a complete picture of whether you have unclaimed money or assets, first check the unclaimed property sites of all the states where you have lived in your life (including the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico). Then do a cross-check with the nationwide database.
Each state has its own laws and practices governing unclaimed or abandoned property, which you can find out about by visiting their unclaimed property sites that NAUPA links to here.
Be realistic
While it would nice to learn that there is a million dollars in your name somewhere, it’s not likely. Yes, there have been some really large sums discovered over the years — Frerichs cites a case in Illinois that was worth $11 million. But it’s much more likely you might have anywhere from $10 to $500 in your present (or former) state’s lost and found.
Consider: More than $4 billion worth of unclaimed property was returned to people in fiscal year 2022, NAUPA said. But divide that by, say, 33 million people and you get an average of $121 per person.
Each state decides whether to reveal how much your unclaimed property is worth when you do your initial search. Some don’t reveal any value until you’ve gone through the full process of making a claim. Others, like Illinois, may give a general indication (e.g., under $100 or over $100).
And most if not all states do not have a statute of limitations for when you have to claim your property. For instance, Alabama says, “The state will maintain custody of the property in perpetuity until the rightful owner or heirs come forward to claim.”
All of the state-based searches and claims processes are free. So if a company sends you a solicitation offering to do the legwork for you in exchange for a fee, think twice.
