Billions Currently Exist in Unclaimed Assets

The problem of unclaimed funds has affected every household present in the United States. As per the state treasury, in every family there is at-least one member who has unclaimed assets scattered in different parts of the states. The main reason behind this is attributed to the lack of education and awareness among the people with regards to their unclaimed property, since many of them believe the concept of reclaiming lost money to be unrealistic. The state agencies in US who are managing these lost assets are facing the burden as the pile of lost properties are increasing at an alarming rate compared to the rate at which the owners are coming ahead to claim them.

The larger states like New York and California have alone a record unclaimed money vault of $16 billion dollars, approximately. And similarly all the other small states are reporting massive increases in the pile of unclaimed properties in their respective areas.

As per the recent press releases published concerning the Washington Mutual bank, the customers of the bank have about half a million dollars in the form of unclaimed money in Wisconsin. These funds with the bank are still waiting for their rightful owners. If we go by the records with the state, there are about 8300 unclaimed accounts with the state with a total monetary value of $58,000, whereas there are many other accounts that still have unclaimed money.

The states, in coordination with the federal agencies, are trying their best to reunite the owners with their lost assets by making people aware of the importance of these lost funds on their personal assets.

Some of the programs organized by the government in different states include:

Ohio publishes the list of unclaimed accounts with the owner’s name and last known address in their newspaper at regular interval of time. The advertisement in the Hancock County included 1188 unclaimed fund accounts worth $617,260. These advertisements assisted many owners to locate their lost property after a long time.

The Controller’s office in Maryland publishes regular posts in Frederick News-post. This move assisted in locating about 60,000 owners of unclaimed assets located in the state and cash worth $42 million were recovered.

Some states like Texas are utilizing media channels like television and radio to locate owners of unclaimed assets in the area as they believe media to be one of the strongest weapons to spread awareness among the people. This move has resulted in reduction in massive pile of unclaimed money or missing money. Other than using media as a means to spread awareness, Texas is using publications in the newspaper to circulate list of unclaimed property owners and their last known address details.

It would be best to conclude that unclaimed money in different states comes out to be in the billions but the states are trying their best to reunite people with their lost funds but it is the responsibility of the people to come forward and search for their lost assets