{"id":37801,"date":"2010-07-26T04:00:03","date_gmt":"2010-07-26T11:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/getrichslowly.org\/blog\/?p=37801"},"modified":"2023-09-23T11:18:20","modified_gmt":"2023-09-23T17:18:20","slug":"how-to-find-unclaimed-money-and-unclaimed-property-online","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/how-to-find-unclaimed-money-and-unclaimed-property-online\/","title":{"rendered":"How to find unclaimed money (and unclaimed property)"},"content":{"rendered":"

July 21st was the fifteenth anniversary of my father’s death<\/a>. He died of cancer at age 49, just ten days shy of his fiftieth birthday.<\/p>\n

When Dad died, he left behind a meager estate. Aside from the custom box<\/a> business (which, admittedly, was not “meager”), he managed to leave each family member with $5,000 in life insurance proceeds, and that’s about it. His personal finance skills had never been great, and that included estate planning.<\/p>\n

More than ten years after his death, however, I was contacted by a company out of Florida. “We have your annuity,” they told me.<\/p>\n

“What annuity?” I asked. And they explained that my father had opened an account for me in 1977, when I was just eight years old. He had made a single<\/i> payment into the account, and then forgotten about it. For the past 30+ years, the account has simply been earning interest. The balance is now $438.79.<\/p>\n

Now that I know about this account, I can cash it out by providing a copy of my father’s death certificate. But before the company tracked me down, this was a classic case of unclaimed money.<\/p>\n

What is Unclaimed Money?<\/h3>\n

In most (all?) states, banks, utilities, insurance companies, and investment companies \u2014 along with many other businesses \u2014 are required to surrender inactive accounts to the state. These accounts are known as “lost”, “abandoned”, or “unclaimed” property. They contain unclaimed money.<\/p>\n

Unclaimed property can include things like:<\/p>\n