Discovering Unclaimed Government Funds: A Guide to Reclaiming Your Money

Today we will start discovering unclaimed government funds and understand how to reclaim them.

Most people are unaware that they may have unclaimed assets waiting for them to redeem.

What are unclaimed government funds?

When we talk about discovering unclaimed government funds, we are referring to money and even assets that have been turned over to the government because the owner couldn’t be located.

This is something that happens often and can have a lot of sources, like bank accounts that are not accessed in a long period of time.

Also it can come from tax refunds, when the government can’t locate the rightful owners, the unclaimed tax refunds will be held by the government until they are able to deliver to the taxpayers.

Another situation where this can happen is with uncashed checks issued by government agencies or businesses. If the checks are not cashed within a certain timeframe they will probably be considered unclaimed.

Unredeemed U.S. Savings Bonds that have stopped earning interest may be considered unclaimed. The U.S. Treasury maintains a database where individuals can check if they have any unclaimed savings bonds.

Wages and salaries from government employment can also be called an unclaimed fund.

Contents of safe deposit boxes that have been abandoned or forgotten by their owners may be considered unclaimed. State governments often hold auctions or take other measures to reunite the items with their owners or heirs.

In some cases, individuals who have changed their jobs or worked on companies that went bankrupt or just went out of business, may have some type of unclaimed funds in form of pension benefits.

These funds could be held by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) or the employer.

Why do they become unclaimed?

When a fund became unclaimed, it means that the government couldn’t find the rightful owner and give them what was theirs.

And this can happen when people move and don’t change their contact information or address to new places.

Also when people die without leaving a will with beneficiaries or heirs. It’s a situation that can happen when people are unaware of what they are owed to.

Another occasion is when a business closes without notifying the government of their wages or debts.

And during this process the government puts some effort to find the owners of this unclaimed funds.

Start discovering your unclaimed government funds

To start discovering unclaimed government funds you need to know where to start, and in the usa.gov website you can find some options.

The first one is to search by state, because most of the unclaimed funds are held by state governments, that comes from sources like bank accounts, insurance policies and others.

In your state’s unclaimed property office you can do the search for unclaimed money, and if you moved recently you probably will need to go to the state you were living before.

They maintain a database that you can check for yourself in the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators.

Other database to help discovering unclaimed government funds

You can also search in other databases from the United States that are specific to the unclaimed funds.

For example if you were an employee and think that you may have wages or pension that were unclaimed, you may have to look in the Department of Labor’s Database or the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC).

Also if you have unclaimed insurance money, you should look for it on the VA Life Insurance Funds, for veterans affairs, and also the database from FHA insurance refunds.

In case of taxes you have a variety of options to see if you have unclaimed funds, you can use the IRS Where’s My Refund? search, or the Stimulus checks.

Lately people have been doing a lot of investment, and sometimes they can have some unclaimed funds as investments through the SEC, Securities and Exchange Commission database.

Also in case of Bank failures you should look in the FDIC or in the Credit Union failures to get your money back.

Savings Bonds can last until 20 years and reach up to 30 years, so it’s natural that at some point people forget and they become unclaimed funds. To solve this you can use the website TreasuryHunt.gov.

In case of bankruptcies the individual needs to use the database of the U.S. Courts Unclaimed Funds Locator.

And in the last option, you can search in the IIM, Individual Indian Money, to see if you have money or other unclaimed funds in their accounts.

So now that we already know how to start discovering unclaimed government funds, and how to locate you can try to claim them by the sources and databases from federal agencies, state governments and other organizations from the United States.

Daniel 18 de March de 2024