(Part 1 of 2)

The state of California’s unclaimed money program takes in approximately $300 million each year. Why does it matter to you? Well, if you or someone you know is or ever was a resident of the Golden State (or ever had any type of business dealings, whether you knew it or not), a chunk of that big heap of Cali unclaimed money might very well be yours!

Under the state of 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 assets are handed over to the Treasury Dept. if their owners don’t come for them within a certain time period. This ‘dormancy period’ varies from state to state, but in Cali it’s three years. These unclaimed monies then get moved to the California unclaimed property div, where they sit in the state’s general fund until returned to their rightful owners. This is where officials working for the state who handled Cali unclaimed cash were recently criticized. It appears that they have been all to happy to track down and take hold of the lost funds from the establishments holding them but but were less than enthusiastic about contacting the actual owners in the Cali unclaimed property list.

One of the primary reasons for the inability of government give back forgotten cash to residents, they claim, is the fact that they can’t be located. The issue is, who would think people like Jennifer Lopez, Victoria Beckham, Brad Pitt, Adam Sandler, Angelina Jolie ,Marlon Brando, Keanu Reeves, ZsaZsa Gabor and Gerri Halliwell would be difficult to find? Their names and the names of a number of other famous people are just some of the names in the Cali missing money list but they have not been contacted by the employees in the California Unclaimed Money Division. They’re all owed checks for forgotten funds by Cali amounting from hundreds to the thousands in Ms. Jolie’s case. This proves once again Cali state officials’ interest in keeping this money in the general fund for use in balancing the budget deficits for as long as they can. In fact, there was a recent ruling by a federal 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 new policy of reuniting it with the actual owners was adopted.

(to be continued)

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