In the old days, when someone died you could easily figure out where they had money because of the quarterly statements that would get mailed to the house. But many financial institutions now offer the option to forgo paper statements. The customer can instead visit the website to view their account or get tax statements. If the account holder dies without documenting an account, how will the executor of the estate be able to discover it?
http://www.bankingquestions.com/deceasedindividuals/q_findingrecords.html
This may help. Otherwise, my best advice is to contact a professional and ask for advice.
“JohnT, WTF are you talking about? There are professional estate executors?”
Yes, and most large banks will have a few.
Would the executor have access to the income tax returns of the deceased? I think the 1040 form lists every company that issued a 1099 to the person.
Ah, yes, the tax man knows all. Undoubtedly, the IRS would have records of all the 1099’s. Getting access to those would reveal the accounts.
Related to this, what would a financial institution do if no one contacted them? If the executor doesn’t discover the account and it’s forgotten about, would the financial institution eventually find out and do something with the money?
We don’t get 1099s from a couple banks since the interest earned is below $5. (Checking accounts or small accounts with virtually zero interest rates. IRA accounts are also treated differently.)
What we do is make an annual spreadsheet summary of all accounts, including banks, amount and account number. We password protect the original for our purposes, make a 2nd copy with most of each account number deleted. We give copies of the later to the kids and also print out a copy for our files. That’s enough info that they can track things down. Plus it’s interesting to compare things year-to-year, make projections, etc.
If you do nothing with a bank account long enough, the account is considered abandoned and the money turned over to the state. You don’t need to be deceased for this to happen. I have a small account (about $600) at a credit union that I do nothing with. It just accumulates interest (at the rate of two or three cents a month) and periodically, they send me a letter that I need to reply to, just to confirm that I still want to leave the account open.
See the link provided by JohnT for details.
If there is no account activity for a specified amount of time the account is transferred to the State. The State makes attempts to find the account owner and if not found the State keeps the money. Here is Iowa’s attempt (the Great Iowa Treasure Hunt):
https://www.greatiowatreasurehunt.com/
If you have access to statements from some of the accounts, just looking at the statements may lead you to others. For example you may transfer money to these online savings accounts from your local checking account.
There was a thread (last year?) about “how does the bank know you’re dead?” Someone mentioned that some banks froze joint accounts or accounts with power-of-attorney access before anyone from he family informed them. IIRC, the answer was that the medical system informs the IRS typically quite soon?