Unclaimed Property Blog

These tips may seem like common sense, because they are. What has happened is so many of us lose that common sense viewpoint when we see items we want but don’t need.

Credit cards can be a great thing. They’re convenient, they can help build good credit if used properly and they are very useful in emergencies. However, they can be dangerous.

How sweet the temptation to overspend, how disastrous the end result of overspending. The danger is when you charge more than you can afford, make very low monthly payments and combine that with high credit card interest rates. This is the basic cause for many people to spiral into debt.

There are very important things one should know about copying a will. The following information may be useful to you so you should continue reading.

Did you know that when you are copying an original will you would never remove the staples. Why? If the original will appears to be tampered with, its validity may be questioned in probate court.

In most towns there is someone that is looking for people that owe money and looking for people who have lost money. Wayland, MA isn’t any different. Read on for some laws that the state imposes on found money.

Town Administrator Fred Turkington works to track down Wayland residents who owe taxes to the town while Treasurer Paul Keating is doing just the opposite.

Each year Treasurer Keating is required by law to try to locate people whom the town owes money, individuals and businesses who never cashed checks the town has written.

It seems as if there isn’t enough money to go around sometimes. The flip side to this is that there is money sitting waiting to be claimed. Read on to find out how the Capitol is uniting the people with money.

For over 25 years, the district has accumulated $250 million in unclaimed property. About one-fifth of the owners are found each year.

Locked in an electronically secured vault on K Street are mounds of items that are now handled by the District of Columbia Department of Unclaimed Property. The property has come from banks, corporations, trading companies, hospitals and nursing homes, all required by law to send the city items whose owners have left behind and not come forward to claim.

When you read about people claiming cash you may wonder “How could they lose it?”. This news may add to your concern since we are talking about a baseball team able to claim money the state is holding.

According to the Boston Herald, the Boston Red Sox will be claiming $7,288 in abandoned property that Massachusetts State Treasurer Tim Cahill is holding for the team.

The Canton Illinois police tried to give the $267.00 back to its owner. They attempted to return the money for about 17 years.

Brian Campbell was arrested on Feb. 27, 1989. He was convicted on charges of unlawful use of a weapon and unlawful possession of marijuana.

During the arrest police confiscated all his property, which is standard procedure. Campbell was also wanted on a burglary warrant in Indiana, where he had lived at the time. When Canton police sent him to Indiana to faces charges there, they forwarded all his property except the $267 he had been carrying in cash.

This is the type of story you would like to see in the headline news regularly. A young woman doing a good deed has found cash.

Trista Wright was spending her spring break helping others by cleaning out hurricane-damaged homes when she discovered some unusual papers among the debris.

She started raking the unusual papers out of the air conditioner vent. Looking at it she thought it was garbage and decided to shovel it up, changed her mind and bent down to pick it up. Upon further inspection she discovered it was a stack of $100 bills; and then more and more kept coming. The unofficial count puts the cash at more than $30,000.

What do you do if your identity has been stolen? Read this so that you do have some information on what can be done to get your identity and credit back.

The very first thing is to report the identity theft to local law enforcement authorities. This includes the police, postal inspectors and the Secret Service. Why the Secret Service? Identity theft is a federal crime.

Next, send a copy of the police report or other documentation to all banks and companies where your name has been used fraudulently. You keep the original for your records in case any new accounts are opened.

Indiana has over $325 million in unclaimed property. The state is currently looking to find homes for these wayward dollars.

Two Indiana papers will publish a list of names March 22nd and 29th. The list includes all unclaimed assets that were turned over to the state in 2005.

You may be on the list if you have forgotten or lost investment earnings, insurance proceeds or benefits, wages, dormant bank accounts, unclaimed utility deposits, stocks, or safe-deposit boxes. The list does not include real estate or physical property, except for contents of safe-deposit boxes.

It is almost like Christmas again for some residents. Every year the announcement of unclaimed cash and unclaimed property is distributed. You could be on the list.

The Pennsylvania Treasury Department advertises the names and last known address of those individuals and businesses owed unclaimed funds.

Since January 2005, more than $107 million in unclaimed property was returned. The average claim is about $1,300. In 1999 the state had the largest payout which was $1.4 million.

The money comes from financial assets such as bank accounts, uncashed checks, certificates of deposit, insurance benefits, stocks, unused gift certificates, and property abandoned in safe-deposit boxes. The law on the safe-deposit box is if left untouched for five years is declared unclaimed property.