(Part 1 of 2)

The state of California’s unclaimed funds program takes in about 300 million dollars each year. Why should you care? Well, if you or someone you know is or has been a resident of the Golden State (or had any kind of business dealings, whether you knew it or not), a chunk of that big pile of Cali unclaimed money might easily belong to you!

Under the California unclaimed property law, lost money such as 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 passed along to the Treasury Department if their owners don’t locate them within a certain time period. This ‘dormancy period’ varies widely from state to state, but in Cali it’s 3 years. These lost assets then get moved to the California unclaimed property division, where they wait in the state’s general fund until they’re returned to their rightful owners. This is where state officials in-charge of the Cali unclaimed cash were criticized recently. It appears that they have been eager to locate and take hold of the lost assets from the various establishments holding them but showed less interest in contacting the owners in the Cali unclaimed property database.

One of the main reasons for the inability of government give back forgotten money to its owners, they say, is the fact that they can’t be located. 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 difficult to find? Their names and the names of several other celebrities are some of the names in the Cali missing money list but they have not been contacted by the officials in the California Unclaimed Property Division. They’re all owed checks for unclaimed money by Cali ranging in amount from hundreds to the thousands as in the case of Angelina Jolie. This just proves Cali state officials’ interest in holding this money in the general fund for use in balancing the budget deficit for as long as they possibly can. As a matter of fact, there was a recent ruling by a judge on CA abandoned cash, stating that the state was not making enough of an effort to return it to its rightful owners and for a while halted the state’s s ability to seize it until a proper method of returning it to the rightful owners has been adopted.

(to be continued)

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