Rich mystery man dies (long but interesting)

Factual Questions
1

Let’s say that Mr. Fred Jones died. Mr. Jones was an unfriendly sort who had no wife, no ex-wife, no lover or children of any kind. He was an only child born to parents who were only children long dead. He owned a small house by the lake with property around it and kept to himself. One day, he choked on the same tuna and rye sandwich in the same diner he goes to everyday. No one in the diner knows him because he keeps to himself, he never tips, and he smells because he only bathes once a month.

Mr. Jones did not collect Social Security because he was too young (a boon to the Social Security Administration). He never worked, so he never placed a dollar in SSA or has a card, (read further),

In several banks in town, he has several fat bank accounts. As a matter of fact 10 of them. He kept 100,000 USD because of FDIC regulations. When he was alive, Mr. Jones got a modest sum to take care of his monthly needs (bills, food, etc.). He never worked, the money was a trust fund from those mysterious parents who had no reletives themselves.

That’s all we know about Fred Jones.

Questions, (in the USA)

1.) What happens to Fred’s body? Fred has no driving license or any ID at all. He only carries that nonsense (affectionately called bullshit by Fred) on that one day a month he goes to the bank.

How long does a city or county keep a body before they do something with it? They have no one to call, no frame of reference? Would the detectives be called on the scene to find out who in the hell this body was?

2.) What becomes of Mr. Jones’ property? When do the authorities realized the property has been abandoned?(probably when he fails to pay his property taxes). If the power and water gets cut, does the utility company report this to anyone?

3.) What about those bank accounts? Is there a law that forces banks to reveal to the government the deposits (I know the 10K rule) and withdrawls of accounts? Or does this thing happen more than we think where heirs are never found and the banks are beneficiaries to money abandoned to them?

4.) Lastly, the law knows who Fred Jones was, his assets and property. He has no will. He has no heirs. No family at all. When does the local, state and federal government take his estate?

I know that this has happened before. Discuss!

ET

2

IANAL

It’s probably up to the coroner in whatever county he died in. If it’s in Sangamon County, Illinois, the coroner would keep his body for probably thirty days, trying to exhaust all means of contacting friends, relatives, anyone who might know or care that he died. Failing that, he would either be cremated and have his ashes scattered in a park (as is the custom with paupers in Sangamon County), or he would be given a minimalist funeral, paid for by his estate.

The Sangamon County Coroner is Susan Boone, ask her. I can dig up her phone number if this interests you that much. :wink:

I imagine that, in this case, the coroner’s office would notify the county tax assessor, the local utility company, etc., that their customer was in the custody, so to speak, of the coroner, and thus the state would take possession of the property (after a good faith search for heirs failed to turn up anything), and the utilities would cut off service (a live gas line with no one to mind it is a very_bad_thing).

No idea on the other questions.

3

Good job on 1 & 2, as for #4, good job not touching that hot potato.

It never ceases to amaze me, as a lawyer, how people automatically think if you have no will it goes tot he state. While the state determines who gets your property, it almost never goes that far because of the intestacy laws. Now, in your scenario, E.T., it stands more of a chance of happening, but there are two roadblocks:

  1. The trust. A trust has to leave some sort of beneficary. if this fellow was the sole beneficary and was the trustee, that makes sense, but a well drafted trust should should also say what happens at the death of the final income beneficiary. That will be where the money goes, whatever the trust dictates.

  2. Assuming a poorly drafted trust - or a trust that just gave him the money at age 21, let’s say, and he merely drew fromt hat and thus didn’t try to spend more than he had, the intestacy laws go further back then the parents. They would go to great-great-grandparents and on down in most US states to find the surviving heirs before it would revert to the state.

Now, of course, who would do this is tricky. Proably a court-appointed investigator would do the searching, and discover who gets the stuff. I’ve never handled a case like it, though, so I can’t answer that part. Sorry.

4

Intestacy is when you die without a will, and state statutes provide who inherits in such cases. These vary from state to state. Descendants of his grandparents might be heirs in some states. If there are no heirs, the property “escheats” to the state.

Some of your assumptions may not be realistic. For example, he might have had a will and named a charitable organization as beneficiary. Also, certain property need not pass by will. For example, a bank account with a co-owner passes to the co-owner.

5

In the UK, for such a person who is intestate, the government gets all his assets (this is detailed in a booklet the Inland Revenue will send you), but who gets the trust fund is determined by the rules of that fund.

The local coroner takes care of the body and arranges a funeral. I don’t know the specifics.

6

It is highly unlikely that a person of such wealth would have managed to avoid having a SSN. You have to have one for tax persons and Mr. Jones would have to have been paying taxes. If he wasn’t, and the IRS somehow missed him, then there is the additional issue of the IRS going after his estate for back taxes. The fines and interest add up quite quickly. A good tax lawyer can bring them down into reasonable range, but with no estate hiring such a lawyer, the IRS will walk off with most of it.

My BIL used to track down the families of intestate folk for the state. They really, really, tried to find someone, anyone, so all the legal stuff could be taken care of and the file closed.

(My BIL tracked down the step-son of one poor guy, trying to get him to pony up some money for a basic burial. The step-son begged poverty. Kinda strange since he was the star of “McMillan and Wife” at the time.)

7

In the U.S., question 4, what happens when someone dies without a will and without obvious heirs, is a matter of state law. I can give you the answer for New York state, but your state’s law may vary.

New York Estates, Powers & Trusts Law sec. 4-1.1 governs intestate (death without a valid will) succession. It provides for how property is to be distributed based on surviving relations.

Under that section, heirs include decendants (children, grandchildren, etc.), parents, decendants of parents (brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, grand-niece/nephew, etc.), grandparents, children of grandparents (aunts, uncles), grandchildren of grandparents (first cousins), and great-grandchildren of grandparents (first cousins once removed).

If someone dies without a will and without a relation on that list, the property reverts to the state (legal term “escheat”) under the New York Abandoned Property Law.

8

Oh, and before someone questions my omission of the obvious: The spouse is also on the list of those who inherit if someone dies without a will.

9

I was under the impression that in the OP, the coroner is not able to identify the body because he’s not carrying any identification. In that case, how long would it take before Mr. Jones’s bank or other contacts realised that he’s missing and something must be done?

10

WAG: coroner notifies the probate court. They start an investigation looking for heirs and assets. Eventually they have a hearing and then notify the holders of his assets to surrender the property to the state. This could take some time - a year or two?

11

In every state I personally know of (not a lengthy list), bank accounts and some other asset accounts that have no customer transactions in, say, seven years must be turned over to the State Treasurer as 'abandoned property. The list of new ‘abandoned’ accounts is generally published periodically in the major local papers. In many states (like my own), the complete list of owners names is published in at least one major paper every year.

There are many websites that compile the state lists and other lists of inactive accounts. Many charge you to access this information, or having titillated you by showing you your name on the list, charge you for the details. Don’t fall for them (or the services which force you to download their probably untrustworthy software) - there are free services. In fact, I wouldn’t use ANY search site that wasn’t listed on a state Abandoned Property or Attorney General website. There are simply too many types of scams out there

I checked my family members’ names 7-8 years ago, and found several thousand dollars in bank accounts, tax refunds, insurance and other accounts (which I claimed by contacting the relevant agencies directly with a simple letter. I believe (but am not certain) that this was the site that got me those hits (but I saw the same hits on many other websites at the time, and some still list those accounts as outstanding, even though I’ve long since collected them)

Google will also help you find class action suits and other monies you may be entitled to. e.g. Creditanstalt AG and Bank Austria AG are returning Holocaust assets seized before and during WWII. Not just survivors, but descendants are eligible.

12

If this is the case, I suppose his body could be unidentified indefinitely. ISTR a story from Germany not too long ago about a man who had been dead for five years, in his apartment, seated in his chair with his TV on. His pension was directly deposited into his bank account, and his bills were directly withdrawn, so nobody noticed anything was amiss (since all of his bills were paid on time and none of his “checks” ever bounced).

However, given the situation in the OP: it could still take years. The bank wouldn’t take notice unless checks started bouncing (suppose he had automatic withdrawals for his utilities or something). The utility company would merely shut off his services once the bills stopped getting paid. And the tax assessor would just send collection notices to him. In Sangamon County, at least, you don’t start to get threatened with foreclosure for unpaid taxes unless you haven’t paid in, like, a decade or something. And this guy in the OP seems to be quite the miser, so the annual taxes on his property probably don’t amount to more than $100.

13

Following up on my fictional story,

Mr. Jones dies without ID. He lives in a medium sized city where he is anonymous. The man keels over and dies one day at lunch. Nobody misses him and no one cares.

He has a house and those bank accounts. The real question is how long does it take for the different authorities to realize that the house and the money have been abandoned? After that, who takes the estate?

ET

14

Being as this is theoretically private property belonging to some unidentified heir, property taxes would be owed on the property. At some point in the future, the amount of tax owed would exceed the value of the property and the state could claim ownership of the property.

15

Seconding what ftg said, it would be virtually impossible for Mr. Jones not to have a Social Security number. But how does whether he has a Social Security number play any part in your scenario? You wrote, “(read further)”, but never mentioned a Social Security number again.

16

How about this: Mr. Jones keeps his ID, including his SSN Card, buried in a small metal box down by the lake, in an alcove it’s easy to miss unless you’re looking for it. Weeds and such, you know. When his body is finally discovered, nobody knows the box even exists. Mr. Jones goes to the coroner as a John Doe, who has not so much as a dental record on file with the local medicos.

How about that?

17

A lot sooner than that. Around here it’s 3 years of non-payment and your property goes up for auction by the county. It’s a highly effective scam. They (claim to) mail you your late notices, the auction is held, someone who just happens to be related to the county tax commissioner gets your property for 1/3 of its market value minus the taxes. It has become such a big business that some counties now “sell” their deliquent taxes to private companies who 1. Don’t bother to notify you that you owe $20. 2. Have no mechanism to allow you to actually pay the money! 3. Don’t have to carry out the auction on the courthhouse steps (far less notification).

Moral: Double check your taxes.

We had our mortage sold to another company recently. At the same time our taxes went up. We notified everyone about this. But still the new company only paid the old rate. I called over a week ago the county and found out how much we owe. They said they had sent a letter. Still haven’t got it. Yeah, right.

Hundreds of thousands of $ of property are at stake and no one requires a certified letter. Wow.