(Part 1 of 2)

The California’s unclaimed property program takes in roughly three hundred million dollars every year. Why should you care? Well, if you or anyone you know is or ever was a resident of the Golden State (or ever had any type of business dealings, whether you were aware of it or not), a chunk of that massive pile of CA forgotten funds might very well be yours!

Under the California unclaimed funds law, abandoned assets 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 turned over to the Department of the Treasury if their owners don’t come for them within a certain time period. This ‘dormancy period’ varies widely from state to state, but in CA it is 3 years. These lost assets then go to the CA unclaimed property div, where they sit in the state’s general fund until they are returned to the people they truly belong to. This is where state officials who handled CA unclaimed cash were recently criticized. It appears that they were eager to locate and take hold of the lost assets from the various establishments holding them but but were less than enthusiastic about tracking down the owners in the CA unclaimed money records.

(to be continued)

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I-Team 10 investigation: Unclaimed money – WHEC TV-10
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BRIEF: MONEY: Washington list of unclaimed property … – TMCnet
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