I once received a letter in the mail about recovering unclaimed property, which I immediately discarded even though the direct mailing looked to be legit.
You might be wondering what “Unclaimed Property” is as there are billions of dollars of unclaimed property just in the United States. The National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators (NAUPA), is the foremost authority on the subject and they define it as:
Unclaimed property, or abandoned, is accounts of financial institutions and/or companies that haven’t had contact or activity for greater than a one year period.
Some of the most common forms of unclaimed property are:
- Bank accounts (checking/savings) or certificates of deposit
- Stocks including uncashed dividends
- Distributions from trusts
- Insurance payments
How I found out I had Unclaimed Property
When I was born, one of my parent’s friend gave me a share of stock of a publicly traded company. To this day I still have the stock certificate in hand, but had not received a dividend from this company for years even though some of my other siblings have been receiving their quarterly dividend checks.
I was under the impression that I still owned this stock, but needed to research why I was not receiving the dividend check. After calling the company I was referred to corporate issuer. After verifying all of my information with them, they informed me that since the address was incorrect and had not been updated for some time that the property had been turned over to the state.
After contacting the state agency I was directed to, they informed me this was entirely possible and that the stock was most likely just sold off at fair market value in the past. Later, they proceeded to tell me that this money was owed to me and that I had to follow these certain steps in order to be sent the owed funds.
The Lightbulb Goes Off
Maybe I should not have discarded the direct mail notifying me about the unclaimed property....
How to See If You are Owed Money - Unclaimed Property Search
Every state has their own database with the information, but most states are linked up with a site called Missing Money, which aggregates many states data into one website. If you prefer to search for your specific state, you can select the specific state here.
For this example, I have selected Colorado as the state to see if there is Unclaimed Property owed to me. The website for the Colorado Unclaimed Property is https://colorado.findyourunclaimedproperty.com/. According to their site, they have returned $387 million in Unclaimed Property to individuals/companies.
As you can see, most of the states operate the same way with this and they make it pretty simple to search for yourself/family members. Colorado residents can click “Get Started” to begin their search.
Once you get to the search page, they show the criteria in order to narrow the results, but most include some variation of individual or business name with zip code and or city.
Note: I highly recommend searching for any nicknames you may have and reversing your first and last name, which is how I found mine.
After you enter the information you will be taken to a list page where you can view whether there is unclaimed property owed to you from your search.
From my search I did not have anything since I am not from Colorado, but if you find a result that is you or your family it can be claimed from there.
If you find property that is yours that was unclaimed you can file a claim, which is usually just a pdf document for you to fill. You are usually required to send some identification information (like a drivers license) to prove you are able to claim the property. Typically you are sent an email after you complete file the claim notifying you that your claim was received.
It takes 6-8 weeks typically for the check to be sent, but sure enough the check came from the department of financial services from my state.