Let’s talk about our find yours topic for today: namely the importance of searching ALL 50 states if you want to be sure to find all unclaimed money owed to you.
Yes, the states where you have lived are the top priority for a search, because unclaimed money is most often held in the state where the citizen lives or lived. BUT that is not always the case! The second most common location for unclaimed money is the state where the company that owes it to you is based.
That’s because, by law, unclaimed property is supposed to go to the state where you live, but if the company doesn’t know your address, then that unclaimed property is required to be held in the state where the company is based.
This can be confusing, because it doesn’t necessarily mean the state where you did business or where the corporate headquarters is. For example, think of all the companies that do business in one state but are incorporated in the state of Delaware, because of it’s favorable incorporation laws.
This is why I say that a truly thorough search for your and your loved ones means checking unclaimed property records in all 50 states. Having said that, it is NOT really that hard to do. When you use the website MissingMoney.com, that automatically checks 40 states for you. Then, you just head over to unclaimed.org —as always that’s .org— to check the other 10 states individually.
As a reminder, the 10 states you must check with unclaimed.org, because they don’t participate with MissingMoney.com— are Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Oregon, South Carolina and Wyoming.
I would LOVE to profile somebody who found their unclaimed money in the state where the company was based instead of their own home state. So PLEASE, let me know if this happened to you. You can get in touch with me at EasyMoneyShow.com/contact.
