It is common for many people to have unclaimed property held by the State.\u00a0 Unclaimed property can result from dormant back accounts, unclaimed dividends, and life insurance policies.\u00a0 Many times after someone dies, family members will check to see whether there is unclaimed property.\u00a0 Personal representatives will sometimes also check to see of the deceased person had any unclaimed property.\u00a0 The process for claiming unclaimed property for a deceased person can be fairly cumbersome, but this varies state by state.\u00a0 The following is a true report of one person’s attempt to claim unclaimed property in Missouri.\u00a0 He answers the question no, it is usually not worth it to claim unclaimed property.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
That\u2019s what they call it in the State of Missouri. The Office of the State Treasurer accumulates uncashed checks and unclaimed awards and who-knows-what-else through its right of Escheat. Then they publish a list of the \u201crightful owners\u201d and wait in ambush for any na\u00efve fool who thinks they can wheedle anything out of them.<\/p>\n
I was one of those fools once. My brother died. My brother was the original Libertarian. He did not believe in anything to do with the medical, legal, financial or insurance industries. He had no doctor, no will, no health insurance and no desire to deposit the AT&T dividend checks. You see, when my grandmother died in 1961, she left a few shares of AT&T stock to me, my sister and my brother. My sister, who was once voted The Craziest Woman in North America, immediately sold hers and bought cat food. I don\u2019t remember what I did with mine (I was 15). My brother threw his in the trash. But AT&T dutifully sent him dividend checks every quarter. They also wound up in the trash. Who throws their mail in the trash? Soon, AT&T became Qwest, Southwestern Bell, Bell South, Verizon and probably Dunkin\u2019 Donuts, and all of them sent him dividends as well.<\/p>\n
A few years after he died, a friend of mine was looking at the Unclaimed Property list and saw my brother\u2019s name, two hundred times. All those uncashed dividend checks had escheated to the state and were there for the taking. Well, not so fast. When my brother died intestate, his meager estate was divided among myself and the two people in the world he hated the most \u2013 his father and his sister. If that news had reached him, wherever the Hell he went, he would have certainly turned over in his grave. By the time I began this Quixotic quest for Holy Dividends, both my father and sister had died.\u00a0 To satisfy the state, I had to prove my brother was dead and died without a will and that his estate was probated.\u00a0 Then I had to prove my father had died and provide his will (he left everything to me); the same for my sister (she left everything to her cats). This was an endeavor only slightly less complicated than obtaining a Top-Secret Security Clearance from the Kremlin. Once I had all of that paperwork teed up, I thought I was home free.\u00a0 But so did Dorothy when she landed in Munchkin Land.<\/p>\n
You see, my brother lived in various places during his adult life and the uncashed checks had been mailed to many addresses. I had to prove that my brother had lived in those places. A simple utility bill would suffice, but he had lived in some of these places so long ago, I wasn\u2019t sure utilities had been invented yet. This whole procedure, which had been copied step by step from the Ottoman Empire, took two years. I never could prove that he had lived in some of the addresses and had to abandon those items, but at the end, I received about two thousand dollars for my efforts.\u00a0 Six months later, I received an official letter from the Office of the State Treasurer informing me I needed to return the money because they had, in their calculations, neglected to provide for my sister\u2019s cats. I am not making any of this up.\u00a0 By this time, my brother was not only turning over in his grave, he was doing it Gangnam Style.\u00a0 I threw the letter in the trash and have not heard from them since.<\/p>\n
Last week, my wife\u2019s cousin noticed her grandfather\u2019s name was on that unclaimed property list. She sent me an email asking me to help her locate four generations of legal paperwork, family trees and utility bills. I replied that I had moved to Moscow and become a spy.<\/p>\n