(Part 1 of 2)

The state of California’s unclaimed funds department takes in about 300 million dollars annually. What’s it to you? Well, if you or someone you know is or has been a resident of the Golden State (or ever had any type of business dealings, whether you were aware of it or not), part of that big pile of California unclaimed money might easily be yours!

Under the CA unclaimed funds law, missing money like forgotten checking and savings accounts, uncashed checks and money orders, mineral deposits, salary checks, cash and stock dividends, state of California unclaimed tax refunds, gift certificates, and other assets are handed over to the Department of the Treasury if their owners don’t come for them within a given time period. This ‘dormancy period’ varies from state to state, but in California it is 3 years. These lost assets then go to the CA unclaimed property division, where they wait in the state’s general fund until they are returned to the rightful owners. This is where state officials who handled California unclaimed cash were criticized recently. It seems that they were all to happy to locate and collect the lost funds from the establishments holding them but but were less than enthusiastic about tracking down the actual owners in the California unclaimed money database.

One of the primary reasons for the inability of government to return forgotten cash to its owners, according to the government, is that they can not be located. The problem is, who would think people like Angelina Jolie, ZsaZsa Gabor, Gerri Halliwell, Victoria Beckham, Keanu Reeves, Brad Pitt, Adam Sandler, Marlon Brando and Jennifer Lopez would be difficult to track down? Those names and the names of a number of other famous people are just a few of the names in the California missing money database and yet they haven’t heard from the employees in the California Unclaimed Money Division. They’re all owed checks for forgotten funds by California ranging in amount from hundreds to the thousands as in the case of Angelina Jolie. This just shows California state officials’ interest in keeping this cash in the general fund for them to balance the budget deficit for as long as they can. As a matter of fact, there was recently a ruling by a federal judge on CA abandoned money, saying that the state wasn’t trying hard enough to return it to its rightful owners and has temporarily halted the state’s s ability to seize it until a better policy of returning it to the actual owners was adopted.

(to be continued)

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