(Part 1 of 2)

The California’s unclaimed funds program takes in about three hundred million dollars annually. Why does it matter to you? Well, if you or someone 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), part of that big pile of California lost assets might easily be yours!

Under the California unclaimed property (or escheat) law, lost money such as 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 financial assets are handed over to the Treasury Department if the rightful owners don’t come for them within a certain time period. This ‘dormancy period’ varies widely from state to state, but in California it’s 3 years. These abandoned assets then head to the CA unclaimed property div, where they wait in the state’s general fund until returned to the people they truly belong to. This is where state officials in-charge of the California unclaimed cash were recently criticized. Seems that they have been all to happy to locate and take hold of the lost assets from the various establishments holding them but but weren’t so keen on locating the owners in the California unclaimed funds database.

One of the primary reasons for the government’s inability give back forgotten cash to its owners, they claim, is that they can not be tracked down. The issue is, who would 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 track down? Those names and the names of a number of other celebrities are just a few of the names in the California missing money database and yet they have never heard from the officials in the California Unclaimed Money Division. They’re all owed checks for lost assets by California amounting from hundreds to the thousands in Ms. Jolie’s case. This proves once again California state officials’ interest in holding this cash in the general fund for use in balancing the budget deficit for as long as they possibly can. In fact, there was a recent ruling by a federal judge on CA abandoned assets, saying that the state wasn’t making enough of an effort to locate the rightful owners and has temporarily halted the ability of the state to seize it until a new policy of returning it to the rightful owners has been adopted.

(to be continued)

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Missouri returns record amount of unclaimed property
Missouri returns record amount of unclaimed property

State returns record amount of unclaimed property
Missouri Treasurer Clint Zweifel said his office returned a record amount of unclaimed property to rightful owners over the past year. The treasurer’s office oversees the state’s unclaimed property division, which holds the unclaimed proceeds from bank accounts, safe deposit boxes and other assets.

Treasurer Clint Zweifel announces record $35 million in Unclaimed Property returned
State Treasurer Clint Zweifel today announced his administration returned a record $35 million in Unclaimed Property to a record 92,000 account holders during fiscal year 2010.

Website Reunites Missourians With Unclaimed Cash
Southwest Missouri has over 30 million dollars in unclaimed property, and with a web-based search engine in tact, finding out if you’re entitled to some of it could be just a click away. KSMU’s Chasity Mayes tells us how the state’s largest lost and found has some Missouri residents seeing dollar signs.