Could you have unclaimed money waiting for you? I’ll tell you how to find out. I’m Amy E. Feldman.
A homeless woman in Oregon died last month without ever knowing that she had almost $900,000 from an unclaimed inheritance waiting for her in the state treasury. The woman had relapsed into drug addiction after her mother died in 2016, and her mother’s executors couldn’t find her, so after three years, the money was sent to the state’s department of unclaimed property.
Every state has a law that says that if an account or other property has no known owner, the state gets to keep it until the time that the real owner comes to claim it. So, if you forgot about a passbook savings account, or if you got a rebate check you never cashed—all of that, after a certain period of time, gets reported, and then sent to your state’s treasury. It’s easy to find out if your state is holding your money. Go to usa.gov/unclaimed-money, click on your state, and fill in your name to see if today is your lucky day.
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