Locating Unclaimed Property in California – Part 1 of 2

(Part 1 of 2)

The California’s unclaimed funds program takes in about $300 million annually. Why should you care? 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 were aware of it or not), a chunk of that big heap of California unclaimed money might very well belong to you!

Under the state of California unclaimed property (or escheat) law, lost 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 assets are passed along to the Treasury Dept. if the rightful owners don’t locate 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 get moved 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 California unclaimed cash were criticized recently. Seems that they were eager to locate and take hold of the lost funds from the various establishments holding them but showed less interest in contacting the owners in the California unclaimed money records.

One of the primary reasons for the inability of government give back forgotten cash to the people it belongs to, they say, is that they can’t be located. Problem is, would would ever think that people like ZsaZsa Gabor, Angelina Jolie, Victoria Beckham, Gerri Halliwell, Brad Pitt, Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Lopez, Adam Sandler and Marlon Brando would be difficult to find? Those names and the names of several other famous people are just a few of the names in the California missing money list and yet they haven’t been contacted by the officials in the California Unclaimed Funds Division. They’re all owed checks for unclaimed money by California ranging in amount from hundreds to the thousands as in the case of Angelina Jolie. This just proves California state employees’ interest in keeping this money in the general fund for them to balance the budget deficit for as long as they possibly can. As a matter of fact, there was a recent ruling by a federal judge on CA abandoned money, stating that the state was not doing enough to locate the rightful owners and for a while halted the state’s s ability to seize it until a new policy of reuniting it with the rightful owners has been adopted.

(to be continued)

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