The Beaver State is known for being the home of the massive, 11,000 foot Mt. Hood, but it is home to a lesser known mountain that is likely of greater interest to Oregon residents. As it stands today, Oregon unclaimed money totals more than 250 million dollars. That’s right, more than a quarter of a billion dollars, owed to more than a million residents. This translates in to approximately 30% of Oregonians, which means the chances that any given citizen is owed a chunk of this cash are 1 in 3.
Each year, the state of Oregon takes in between 30 and 40 million dollars in unclaimed property, but only returns approximately $10 million to the actual owners. Since the owners of the other $20 to $30 million weren’t located, that money gets added to the total, so that $250 million only stands to grow. While it is certainly hard to believe that 1 out of every 3 Oregon residents are due a claim, these monies really come from sources that we all use everyday. The OR Department of State Lands describes some of the most common sources as follows:”Unclaimed property includes savings accounts, checking accounts, unpaid wages or commissions, stocks, dividends proceeds, refunds, money orders, paid-up life insurance policies, utility deposits and contents of safe deposit boxes.”
Each type of asset can be classified as “unclaimed” after it has been deemed abandoned. To be deemed abandoned, the asset must sit inactive for a period of 1, 2, 3, or 5 years, or in less common cases, 7 or 15 years (for money orders and traveler’s checks, respectively). Generally speaking though, 1-5 years is the assumed dormancy period for the majority of these monies. After the dormancy period has passed, the holder is required to pass the abandoned assets along to the state, which then holds it until the actual owner is able to find it.
The reasons that it is hard to reunite unclaimed property with the rightful owners are numerous, but they usually all come down to a lack of knowledge about where and when to search. While a lot of sites might claim to be “official” or say they offer a complete database, very few actually provide legit records, and even the actual state listings are quite unreliable. Once an asset is turned over to the state, someone at the state has to manually add the record in to the abandoned assets database, but this isn’t done immediately, so it is good practice to check back often. On top of that, because of all the differing dormancy period lengths, a person could perform a search on a given day and then give up if they found no claims, when if they had only searched again the next year they might have discovered a significant claim that simply had a longer dormancy period.
When looking for lost money, there’s a bit more to it than just plugging a name in to the search tool of any old website. Issues that plague new searchers are easy to overcome, but far too many go out on their own and are not able to track down money that is owed to them, which is why the totals grow continually all across the nation. Investing a little time studying professional search practices can greatly increase the odds of filling our pockets with money we had forgotten about.
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Patriots make states abandoned property list - Nashua Telegraph
The New England Patriots, former Boston Bruins star Ray Bourque, and baseball analyst Peter Gammons are among the 40,000 businesses, individuals and charities to have unclaimed money or property being held by Massachusetts. The new list of unclaimed …
RI lottery says thousands in prize money unclaimed (Boston Globe)
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McLennan County treasurer says there’s plenty of unclaimed money on the books (Waco Tribune-Herald)
By Regina Dennis
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