Has anybody (esp lawyers) heard of http://moneychest.com ? Finders Keepers contacted my SO by phone and said that he had a deposit with the phone company which they could collect on his behalf. Apparently they keep 15% of the amount. They gave him an address we had about 15 years ago. He does not have records. The sent a form to be noterized and sent back to them. He called the phone compay and they said that they only keep records for 7 years.
What’s he got to lose? He doesn’t pay anything if he doesn’t collect, right?
Better, though, is to eliminate the middle man. Have your friend contact the controller’s (or treasurer’s) office for the state in which he was living and see about making a claim directly. Many of the states have have websites you can search. I’ve lost the link, but it seems to me that you can get there if you type “unclaimed property” or some such thing into a decent search engine.
I know that Arizona is still holding about $300 that I should be claiming. It was my parents’, though, and I just haven’t had the time to make the effort to get all the paperwork together to show that it was their money, that they are dead (and have been for the last 15 years), and so that therefore it is now my money. That’s almost too much effort for $300.
Just to follow up on what Melin said, I had to go and get an escheated IRA from the State of California recently (B of A had waited all of 6 weeks for me to update my address before sending the money to the state). It really is a simple process, and costs nothing if you can get a notary public to do the witnessing for free.
