Find Unclaimed Money

It's true that estimates show that 7 in 10 Americans are due some type of claim, but in addition to most not even knowing it, those that do know it don't know how to search for it.

A bit more goes in to learning how to find unclaimed money than just putting your name in to a search box on some web site that claims to have an unclaimed property database. For starters many of these web sites don't even have real databases, they have databases filled with bogus information that can return both false negatives and false positives.

In addition to misleading web sites, the state treasury departments themselves don't update their unclaimed funds records that often, even though accounts are turned over to them every day. Not to mention the fact that the state will have NO record of funds that haven't surpassed their dormancy period, which means they haven't been turned over to the state in the first place.

Each state has varying dormancy periods for each type of unclaimed money. These periods are usually between 1 and 5 years, depending on the type of account. A few possible sources of found money include:

dormant savings and checking accounts

lost cash dividends

court deposits

payroll checks

uncashed money orders

safe deposit box contents

cash or property like cashiers checks

securities

unclaimed security deposits

stocks

unused gift certificates

mineral royalty payments

credits

unclaimed insurance benefits

found utility deposits

In addition to issues with supposed "unclaimed property database" web sites, you also have to remember that not all records are listed online, especially for missing money being held by federal government agencies.