Unclaimed Funds

One of the biggest misconceptions about searching for unclaimed money, is that it's a one search deal. That couldn't be further from the truth.

The first thing unclaimed money searchers need to know, is that not all records for unclaimed money are online. Secondly, if the forgotten property hasn't been handed over to the state, they'll have no record of it anyway. Each state has laws for how long each type of property must be abandoned before the holder turns it over to the state. These properties include:

cash or property like cashiers checks

payroll checks

unclaimed insurance benefits

dormant savings and checking accounts

stocks

unused gift certificates

unclaimed security deposits

found utility deposits

uncashed money orders

mineral royalty payments

safe deposit box contents

securities

credits

court deposits

lost cash dividends

languishing stocks and bonds

In addition to the reasons stated above, you also might not find a listing of your unclaimed cash in your state's records if they haven't gotten around to adding it to their database. Records are often updated infrequently, so if you search one day and don't find a record, that doesn't mean there isn't one. What if the state inputs the record the next day or the next month or year?

The bottom line is you should not just search online databases (which by the way are often full of bogus third party information), but you need to search state records often because you never know when your record might have been added.