(Part 1 of 2)

The state of California’s unclaimed money department takes in roughly 300 million dollars each 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 had any kind of business dealings, whether you knew it or not), some of that massive pile of CA missing money might very well be yours!

Under the state of California unclaimed funds law, lost money 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 Department if their owners don’t come for them within a given period. This ‘dormancy period’ varies from state to state, but in CA it is 3 years. These lost assets then head to the California unclaimed property division, where they wait 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 criticized recently. Seems that they were all to happy to track down and collect the lost funds from the various establishments holding them but but were less than enthusiastic about contacting the actual owners in the CA unclaimed money database.

One of the main reasons for the inability of government give back forgotten money to the people it belongs to, according to the government, is the fact that they cannot be located. The issue is, who would think people like Angelina Jolie, ZsaZsa Gabor, Gerri Halliwell, Victoria Beckham, Keanu Reeves, Brad Pitt, Adam Sandler, Marlon Brando and Jennifer Lopez would be difficult to find? Their names and the names of several other celebrities are just a few of the names in the CA missing money list but they have not been contacted by the employees in the California Unclaimed Money Division. They’re all owed checks for unclaimed money by CA amounting from hundreds to the thousands in Ms. Jolie’s case. This just shows CA state officials’ interest in holding this money in the general fund for use in balancing the budget deficit for as long as they can. As a matter of fact, there was recently a ruling by a judge on CA abandoned cash, saying that the state was not doing enough to return it to its rightful owners and has temporarily halted the ability of the state to take and hold it until a new policy of reuniting it with the actual owners was enacted.

(to be continued)

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