(Part 1 of 2)

The California’s unclaimed funds program takes in roughly three hundred million dollars every year. What’s it to you? Well, if you or anyone you know is or ever 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 Cali missing money might very well be yours!

Under the state of California unclaimed property law, abandoned assets such as 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 Department of the Treasury if their owners don’t come for them within a given time period. This ‘dormancy period’ varies from state to state, but in Cali it is 3 years. These lost assets then head to the CA unclaimed property div, where they wait in the state’s general fund until they’re returned to the rightful owners. This is where state officials who handled Cali unclaimed cash were recently criticized. It seems that they have been all to happy to locate and collect the lost assets from the establishments holding them but showed less interest in locating the actual owners in the Cali unclaimed funds records.

One of the primary reasons for the inability of government to return forgotten cash to the people it belongs to, they claim, is that they can’t be located. The problem is, who would think that people like Angelina Jolie, ZsaZsa Gabor, Gerri Halliwell, Victoria Beckham, Keanu Reeves, Brad Pitt, Adam Sandler, Marlon Brando and Jennifer Lopez could be hard to track down? Their names and the names of a number of other celebrities are just a few of the names in the Cali missing money list but they have never heard from the employees in the California Unclaimed Property Division. They are all owed checks for forgotten funds by Cali amounting from hundreds to the thousands in Ms. Jolie’s case. This just proves Cali state officials’ interest in keeping this cash 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 money, saying that the state wasn’t doing enough to return it to its rightful owners and for a while halted the ability of the state to take and hold it until a proper method of reuniting it with the rightful owners was enacted.

(to be continued)

–

Unclaimed Money After Hurricane Ike – MyFox Houston
HOUSTON – Two years after Hurricane Ike, millions of federal grant dollars are still out there for Galveston County families. Trouble is they may not even know they qualify for a piece of it. The Galveston …

Public gathers for Missouri’s unclaimed property auction – Columbia Missourian
Unclaimed property is money or other valuable items that have been left in abandoned accounts or safety deposit boxes with no documented activity for at least five years. The property is then turned over to the state,

Bidders grab unclaimed treasures – Columbia Daily Tribune
The money comes from old bank accounts, unclaimed insurance proceeds and uncashed state tax refunds as well as the contents of safe-deposit boxes. In the 20-county Mid-Missouri region that includes Boone County,

Treasurer promotes college saving plans, unclaimed money – Newton Kansan
State Treasurer Dennis McKinney will spend the rest of his week at the … He is opposed by Republican Ron Estes, of Wichita, on the Nov. 2 ballot. Though Kansas tends to be a conservative state, McKinney said he is …

Track down your share of unclaimed billions – St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Everybody loves free money, and you may be able to get some if you’re willing to treasure hunt on one of the many lists of unclaimed property. Typically, unclaimed money originates at financial …