(Part 1 of 2)

The state of California’s unclaimed property program takes in approximately $300 million every year. Why should you care? 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 massive pile of California lost assets could easily be yours!

Under the CA unclaimed property (or escheat) law, abandoned assets such as forgotten savings and checking accounts, cash and stock dividends, mineral deposits, uncashed checks and money orders, state of California unclaimed tax refunds, salary checks, gift certificates, and other assets are handed over to the Treasury Department if the rightful 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 head to the CA unclaimed property div, where they wait in the state’s general fund until returned to their rightful owners. This is where state officials in-charge of the California unclaimed cash were recently criticized. Seems that they were all to happy to locate and take hold of the lost assets from the establishments holding on to them but but were less than enthusiastic about contacting the actual owners in the California unclaimed money records.

One of the main reasons for the government’s inability give back forgotten cash to residents, they say, is that they can’t be located. The problem is, who would think people like Jennifer Lopez, Victoria Beckham, Brad Pitt, Adam Sandler, Angelina Jolie ,Marlon Brando, Keanu Reeves, ZsaZsa Gabor and Gerri Halliwell could be hard to locate? Their names and the names of several other famous people are some of the names in the California missing money list and yet they have never heard from the officials at the California Unclaimed Money Division. They are all owed checks for forgotten funds by California amounting from hundreds to the thousands as in the case of Angelina Jolie. This just shows California state employees’ interest in keeping this cash in the general fund for use in balancing the budget deficits 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 locate the rightful owners and for a while halted the ability of the state to seize it until a proper method of reuniting it with the rightful owners has been adopted.

(to be continued)

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