(Part 1 of 2)

The California’s unclaimed money department takes in approximately 300 million dollars each year. What’s it to you? Well, if you or anyone you know is or was a resident of the Golden State (or ever had any type of business dealings, whether you knew it or not), part of that big pile of Cali missing money could easily be yours!

Under the CA unclaimed property (or escheat) law, missing money like 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 financial assets are handed over to the Treasury Dept. if the rightful owners don’t locate them within a given time period. This ‘dormancy period’ varies widely from state to state, but in Cali it is three years. These forgotten funds then head to the California unclaimed property division, where they wait in the state’s general fund until returned to the people they truly belong to. This is where officials working for the state who handled Cali unclaimed cash were recently criticized. It appears that they were all to happy to locate and collect the lost funds from the various establishments holding them but showed less interest in locating the owners in the Cali unclaimed money database.

(to be continued)

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Housing assistance available for families (The Altoona Herald-Index)
Pleasant Hill has money to give away. The city in November set aside $125,000 for low- to moderate-income families to use to work on their homes. Historically, much of that money has gone unclaimed.

Score others’ unclaimed property on eBay (CNNMoney.com via Yahoo! Finance)
Need a diamond pinky ring or a gold dog pin with ruby eyes?

Owners of unclaimed cash: Read this! (Cape Cod Times)
The Barnstable Probate and Family Court is holding on to more than $1 million in unclaimed cash that could be considered abandoned property, an audit by the state has found.

Urban morgues: Unclaimed corpses push up body counts – USA Today
People are losing their homes … When we do find family, and they are refusing to make burial arrangements, the answer is always that they do not have the money,” she said. In Los Angeles County, California, bodies not claimed by next of kin can be …

Barnstable court holding unclaimed cash (Cape Cod Times)
The Barnstable Probate and Family Court is holding more than $1 million in unclaimed cash that could be considered abandoned property, a state audit found.