(Part 1 of 2)

The state of California’s unclaimed money department takes in about $300 million every year. Why does it matter to you? Well, if you or someone you know is or was a resident of the Golden State (or had any kind of business dealings, whether you knew it or not), some of that big heap of California lost assets might very well be yours!

Under the state of California unclaimed funds law, abandoned assets 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 financial assets are handed over to the Department of the Treasury if the rightful owners don’t locate them within a certain time period. This ‘dormancy period’ varies widely from state to state, but in California it is 3 years. These abandoned assets then go to the California unclaimed property division, where they sit in the state’s general fund until they’re returned to the people they truly belong to. This is where state officials who handled California unclaimed cash were recently criticized. It appears that they have been all to happy to locate and collect the lost assets from the various establishments holding on to them but showed less interest in tracking down the owners in the California unclaimed money records.

One of the main reasons for the inability of government give back forgotten money to residents, according to the government, is the fact that they cannot be tracked down. The problem is, who would think that people like Angelina Jolie, ZsaZsa Gabor, Gerri Halliwell, Victoria Beckham, Keanu Reeves, Brad Pitt, Adam Sandler, Marlon Brando and Jennifer Lopez could be hard to find? Their names and the names of a number of other famous people are just a few of the names in the California missing money list but they have not been contacted by the officials in the California Unclaimed Money Division. They’re all owed checks for unclaimed money by California amounting from hundreds to the thousands in Ms. Jolie’s case. This just proves California state employees’ interest in keeping this money in the general fund for use in balancing the budget deficits 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 was not doing enough to locate the rightful owners and has temporarily halted the ability of the state to take and hold it until a new policy of returning it to the rightful owners was adopted.

(to be continued)

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