You Could Be Owed Unclaimed Money — Here’s How To Find Out

Are You Due Unclaimed Money?

(ConservativeInsider.org) – Have you ever wished some money would just fall into your lap? While nobody has figured out how to make it literally rain money (yet), you might be one of the lucky Americans who has assets that have gone unclaimed.

According to the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators (NAUPA), 1 in 10 Americans has unclaimed property. These assets could be the result of a number of things, like one of your relatives died and you weren’t able to find all of their accounts. Maybe a bank that you used to do business with went out of business and you have unclaimed money somewhere. NAUPA reports over $3 billion is returned to its rightful owners each year.

What Is Unclaimed Money?

Most of the time, unclaimed money is something that you had at one point and then forgot about. According to bankrate.com, accounts that have gone unused for a year might be considered abandoned or unclaimed. When the account goes dormant, the institution will generally try to reach out, but sometimes that’s impossible. When unable to contact the owner, they might declare it unclaimed and send it to a state agency that deals with abandoned assets.

Here are the most common types of unclaimed assets:

FHA-insurance funds
Retirement accounts
Bank accounts
Tax refunds (both state and federal)
Unpaid wages
Annuities or insurance accounts
Pensions
Savings bonds

Where Can You Search for Unclaimed Money?

The federal government doesn’t have a central database to look through to see if you have unclaimed money with it. That means you are going to have to do a little bit of hunting on your own.

Here are some of the websites you can check:

Search the IRS website for undelivered or unclaimed tax refunds
Use MissingMoney.com to search multiple state databases
Check the database on the network of the National Association of State Treasurers
Contact the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation to search for unclaimed pensions
Search the US Department of Veterans Affairs for unclaimed insurance money
Check the Department of Labor’s website to recover unpaid wages
Your state revenue department will be able to find out if they owe you a state tax refund
Visit the Treasury Department website to find unpaid foreign claims
The US Courts Unclaimed Funds Locator might help you find unclaimed bankruptcy funds
Use TreasuryHunt.gov to find savings bonds
Search the SEC Claims Funds for enforcement cases
Check this database for FHA-Insurance Refunds