Annual reminder: you may have unclaimed funds that are being held by your state (US) or other government.
There are many reasons you might have unclaimed funds: abandoned accounts, unclaimed deposits or refunds, uncashed checks, misspelled names, estate funds, incorrect addresses, misplaced inheritance and trusts, etc, and your government is required to hold your property until you claim it.
They will not seek you out, and most people are completely unaware they may have lost funds or property being held by the state.
Every state in the US and most governments worldwide have an official website where you can check whether you have unclaimed property and submit a claim. There are typically no fees, and you shouldn’t need an attorney or solicitor to claim them.
Just search ‘[my state] or [my country] unclaimed property’ or ‘biens non réclamés’.
Make sure you’re at the official site for your government and not one of the many scam sites trying to get a cut by doing this for you. The official sites are typically easy and should not require a 3rd party. There should be no extra fees.
If you’re in the US, check every state you’ve lived in. Moving state is one of the major reasons this happens, and your unclaimed funds will not move to a new state with you.
Here’s my previous thread on this, with more discussion. This isn’t sovcit bullshit. It’s real.
Also note that you’re unlikely to find life-changing amounts this way. Most people report a few dollars to a few thousand. Large amounts motivate lawyers to seek you out.
If you find unclaimed funds, I’d love to hear about it!
My spouse found a few thousand $ earlier this year. They went on an absolute bender looking up everyone they’d ever met to see if others had unclaimed property.
I recently got a letter in the mail from a company offering to help me collect my unclaimed funds. They kindly told me what state it was in and the company reporting it, which was plenty of information for me to go to the state comptroller’s web site and find it for myself. It took me less than 10 minutes to collect $5k that seems to have somehow come from stock options that I never exercised and assumed they disappeared after the company got acquired.
The people offering to help me collect it are still sending me letters and text messages, long after the check has cleared my account.
Yeah this is one of those weird scam sounding things that is actually true
Every state has a website where you can check to see if they owe you any money.
Check any state youve ever worked or lived in.
California owed me like $250 from working there.
That reminds me, I have some in a couple states… I guess it is time to claim them.
