Unclaimed property (sometimes referred to as abandoned) refers to accounts that have had no activity generated or contact with the owner for a given period of time, usually 1-5 years or longer. The rightful owner of unclaimed property can be an individual or a corporation. Common forms of unclaimed property include savings or checking accounts, stocks, uncashed dividends or payroll checks, refunds, travelers checks, trust distributions, insurance payments or refunds and life insurance policies, annuities, certificates of deposit, customer overpayments, utility security deposits, mineral royalty payments, and contents of safe deposit boxes.
Each state and many federal agencies have enacted unclaimed property statutes that strictly prohibit companies from keeping funds that they can’t deliver to their rightful owner. These laws require companies to turn undeliverable funds over to a state agency that holds these funds in trust. The state agencies will then make a diligent effort to find the rightful owners. Most states hold lost funds until the owner is found, returning them at no cost or for a nominal handling fee upon filing a claim form and verification of your identity.
Yes, there are several free web sites that can assist you with your search: MissingMoney.com Unclaimed.org are both web sites that are officially endorsed by the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators (NAUPA) containing the official collective records from most state unclaimed property programs.
The amount of time necessary for recovering funds varies widely. In Boomerangs’ experience some states pay within a matter of days, while others may take several months. Boomerang works closely with all unclaimed property administrators to ensure the fastest recovery of funds possible.
Locating, identifying and recovering lost asset funds can create a drain on company resources. Dealing with government agencies can be a challenging process on its own. Multiply this by the number of state and federal agencies only exacerbates the challenge. You might have to visit several and possibly all individual state web sites to perform manual searches. If you locate unclaimed property in multiple states, each state will have different requirements for filing and claiming unclaimed property. Also, when performing a search for a corporate name you must take in to account the correct spelling for the corporation plus different variations of the name. For example when searching for J.C. Penney you will also need to look for: JC Pennys, JCPenney, JC, Penneys. In many cases searching for variations of a name will require you to perform a separate search for each name.
Locators can be an individual or a company that can assist in locating and recovering unclaimed funds for a fee.
Boomerang has developed a set of unique and proprietary search technologies that are capable of comprehensively locating hard to find corporate unclaimed property. Our technology driven processes addresses the “dirty data” issues that severely limit the success of standard search efforts. In addition our capability to search historical and current business names and addresses is unparalleled. Once unclaimed property has been found, Boomerang solutions will assist in filing claims and manage and track the claim to final payment thus eliminating your need to supervise and administrate the process.