(Part 1 of 2)

The California’s unclaimed property program takes in about 300 million dollars every year. Why does it matter to you? Well, if you or anyone you know is or has been a resident of the Golden State (or ever had any type of business dealings, whether you knew it or not), some of that big pile of CA forgotten funds might very well belong to you!

Under the state of California unclaimed funds law, abandoned assets like 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 handed over to the Treasury Dept. if the rightful owners don’t locate them within a given period. This ‘dormancy period’ varies from state to state, but in CA it is 3 years. These forgotten funds then go to the CA unclaimed property division, where they sit in the state’s general fund until they’re returned to their rightful owners. This is where state officials in-charge of the CA unclaimed cash were recently criticized. Seems that they were eager to locate and collect the lost assets from the various establishments holding on to them but showed less interest in locating the owners in the CA unclaimed property list.

One of the main reasons for the government’s inability give back forgotten cash to residents, according to the government, is that they can’t be tracked down. The problem is, would would ever think that 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 find? Their names and the names of several other celebrities are just a few of the names in the CA missing money list and yet they have never heard from the officials in the California Unclaimed Property Division. They’re all owed checks for lost assets by CA amounting from hundreds to the thousands as in the case of Angelina Jolie. This proves once again CA state employees’ interest in holding 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 recently a ruling by a judge on CA abandoned cash, saying that the state wasn’t making enough of an effort to return it to its rightful owners and has temporarily halted the ability of the state to seize it until a proper method of returning it to the actual owners was enacted.

(to be continued)

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