Lost Heirs - Find and Claim a Missing Inheritance

Government custodians and courts are holding tens of billions of dollars in unclaimed money owed lost heirs. Many missing heirs have no idea they're entitled to receive money, often because entitlement arises from the death of a family member who failed to keep complete financial records. Trustees make only a limited effort to track down rightful heirs, and it’s a near-impossible task since they may have moved, switched jobs, changed name after marriage and divorce, or can't be found as a result of computer and clerical errors.

A family member's assets become legally unclaimed after they or the rightful heir fails to 'communicate an interest' in them over a period of time. The period of time that must pass before an asset is considered legally unclaimed - the dormancy period - is set by law. It varies with the type of property involved, but generally runs one to three years.

If, at the end of the dormancy period, there has been no contact, those holding the assets - insurance companies (more than one-quarter of all life insurance policies worth hundreds of millions of dollars have gone unclaimed), banks and credit unions (CDs and IRAs), brokerages (stock and bonds), employers (paychecks and benefits) and utilities (deposits) - transfer them to a government trust account in a process known as escheat. Here they await your claim.

To search for other types of unclaimed property click above