Have you ever received a letter, call or email from someone telling you that you have unclaimed money owed to you? Did this person want to charge you to get you back your own money? If you are like most people, paying someone to recover your own money probably didn’t sit too well with you. There is another way to get
your unclaimed money and not feel like you got taken to the cleaners. This article will tell you how.
WHAT IS A PROPERTY LOCATOR OR HEIR FINDER?
The process of “funds recovery” or “money finding” is not illegal. The people who provide this service are usually called a property locator service or heir finder.
Property locators are governed by laws and have limits on how much they can charge a person for their unclaimed money recovery services. Basically they have found money owed to you, then called you so they can take a portion of your money for providing you the service of finding and claiming your money.
However, it is very easy for you to find and
claim the money yourself. Why pay someone else part of YOUR money?
HOW TO FIND AND CLAIM YOUR MONEY ON YOUR OWN
The unclaimed money you are owed may have come an old checking or savings accounts, stocks, bonds or dividends, insurance policy, safety deposit box contents, etc. Institutions or the companies holding your money were required to turn the money over to the state after a period of inactivity and lack of contact from you.
There is a state or federal agency now holding your money waiting for you to find and claim it. Although these agencies are required to do some advertising and “attempt to contact” the account owners, most likely you have never heard from them.
Finding your money yourself is simple. All you have to do is search in
an unclaimed money database. You want to make sure you search in a database that includes money from all state and federal databases. Searching in only one state database will most likely give you less than complete results and you may miss money owed to you.
The all-in-one complete databases usually have a small charge to access the database. The nice thing is they provide a free search so that you know if your name is reported as being owed money prior to paying to access the site.
Once you find the unclaimed money all you have to do is fill out the appropriate claim form, which most sites will give you to download, and send it in with the required proof of identification and/or proof of ownership or entitlement to the unclaimed money.
The agency or department holding the money will verify your claim and then an unclaimed money check should arrive within 2 to 16 weeks.
If further documentation is required, they will contact you.
Now that you know how to find and claim your unclaimed money you do not need to give someone else part of your money to do it for you!
