Unclaimed Property Blog

Ever wonder exactly what the State Controller does? You read about giving away money, financial status of the State and you hear his/her name, but do you know what their job is? Here is what is listed under the responsibilities of the Controllor’s office, taken from the website of California Controller, Steve Westly:

Controller Steve Westly is the Chief Financial Officer of California, the sixth largest economy in the world. He helps administer $300 billion in state pension funds and serves on 57 state boards and commissions. These are charged with duties ranging from protecting our coastline to helping build hospitals. The Controller is the state’s independent fiscal watchdog, providing sound fiscal control over more than $100 billion in receipts and disbursements of public funds a year, offering fiscal guidance to local governments and uncovering fraud and abuse of taxpayer dollars.

Current Nebraska State Treasurer, Ron Ross, wants to promote the unclaimed property laws. The concern is that he will be using the State’s money and this promotion could also boost his election campaign.

While it may be true that his spending roughly $200,000 in state funds on television ads and a public-relations consultant could result in a big payoff for Nebraskans, his opponent in the race for state treasurer, Shane Osborn, says Ross may actually be seeking another sort of payoff: A boost to his election campaign.

Former welfare mother, Cassandra Garrison, went from a longtime renter to homeowner in 2003 because of a $3,000 check from the federal government and good advice from a friend: Buy a home.

Now Garrison, a single mother, is a homeowner and a landlord in Southeast Portland’s Lents neighborhood.

“I never, ever, never thought I’d be able to do that,” says Garrison, public policy director for the Oregon Food Bank. “We struggled for so long.”

In her case, the federal government’s Earned Income Tax Credit, which was created during the Reagan administration, did what it intended. It helped push her out of the hand-to-mouth poverty cycle.

Yes it is true, Colorado has given their attempts to return unclaimed property and money to citizens a name; the Great Colorado Payback. Keeping in the fun of things, last Friday fans attending the big CU/Nebraska football game had a chance to claim their share of more than $300 million in unclaimed property currently held by the state.

The Great Colorado Payback program allows Coloradoans to claim lost or forgotten property such as checking accounts, savings accounts and safe deposit boxes abandoned for more than five years, which the state has taken for safekeeping.

There are about 3,000 veterans statewide who are owed unclaimed property. The state recently began sending letters to the veterans that are owed their share.

Where is this money from? Cash, securities, escheated estates (those given to the state when no heirs exist) and contents of abandoned safe deposit boxes are regularly turned over to the Office of the State Treasurer. The treasurer’s office then attempts to find the owners. It publishes unclaimed property lists and it maintains a searchable database of unclaimed property online. But many people still never realize they have anything coming to them.

Scattered throughout the Boston, MA region are hundreds of lucky people who are eligible to claim at least $10,000 each.

The government says it wants to return the money, but the owner of record has been deemed unreachable, with no known address. The Globe South did manage to find some of these lucky people.

The state treasurer’s office has 1.5 million unclaimed bank accounts, bonds, insurance policies and safe deposit boxes with a total worth of about $1.8 billion. Dig deep into your memory and if you feel you may be someone that fits into having an account as mentioned, claim it, it is free money.

It is the duty of Texas Controller Carole Keeton Strayhorn to locate the owners of $1.3 billion the state is holding in unclaimed assets.

Sometimes when you see a coin on the ground you pick it up. But if you take the time to look up your name on a particular website, www.CashUnclaimed.com, you could find a whole lot more than a single cent.

Right now more than 100,000 Texans have money being held for them by the state because for whatever reason they couldn’t be found to get the check. But claiming the money now is as easy as jumping on a computer and spending five minutes of your time.

Millions of Californians have made hefty contributions of cash, stocks and personal property to state coffers without knowing it. The reason behind this is that lawmakers have been pilfering from the state’s unclaimed-property cache and using the proceeds to help balance the budget.

Approximately $896 million in unclaimed property was turned over to the state for safekeeping last year under a 46-year-old program designed to protect forgotten or abandoned assets. Less than $239 million of that was eventually claimed; most of the rest went into the state’s general fund.

About $30,000 in unclaimed cash will be moved into the city’s general fund if the rightful owners don’t claim it by the end of the month. To claim this money contact the Oklahoma City Police Department.

The found money turned into the police ranges from one penny to $3,317. Police do make every attempt to return this money to the owners prior to adding it to the city’s budget. There isn’t a standard amount, it is just money that the police had turned in to them for various reasons.

Unclaimed property laws are often complicated and confusing. When do companies have to report this money? How does a consumer claim this money? How long does the government hold the money? All great questions… the problem is that there is no standard answer…

Often referred to as the burden of proof, the burden of persuasion can be very significant. The party who has this burden must convince the court; otherwise he loses!

The burden of persuasion falls to the state as it must convince the court that the property in question is in fact presumptively abandoned. Usually the states have met this burden.