January 5, 2012
Find Missing Money in WI – Part 2 of 2
(Part 2 of 2)
Unclaimed money is handed over to the Treasury Office when abandoned assets are not returned to their owners after a specified period. The 'dormancy period' for WI abandoned funds is five years. Lost money can come from a variety of sources – stock dividends, lost traveler's checks, forgotten bank accounts, uncashed savings and salary checks, lost or unused gift checks, and other monies that have been forgotten about and lost track of. The only tangible assets covered in the WI Unclaimed Property Law are contents of safety deposit boxes that have been deemed abandoned. The State Treasury Office attempts to find the owners of coins, jewelry, family heirlooms, pocket watches, sports cards, etc. but ultimately resorts to auctioning them off at eBay after three years. "There are a lot of safety deposit boxes that get turned over to us which a lot of people don't tell their kids, 'Hey we have a safety deposit box.' So we actively search for those owners for three years and if we can't find them we auction off the contents of the boxes. We do that on eBay," State Treasurer Dawn Marie Sass said.
It was stated by WI's State Treasurer in a recent interview during a report by the WI Radio Network, they just run out of space to keep all of the unclaimed properties as they continue piling up each year. "We do actively search for people for up to three years and then after that time, because we don't have a lot of space, we do have these auctions", she stated in a recent report. The earnings from these items are then held on to by the state like all other forgotten monetary assets and are used by the state until the righful owners step forward and claim them. "Until we can find an owner or an heir, yes, we do use the profits to support our office…", says Sass. The money from auctioned unclaimed items in WI may still be claimed at any time in the future though. "You know there are people who, you know, may be in the service and are stationed over seas for five, six, seven years and then they come back and realize that their, you know, mother's safety deposit box was turned over. So, you know, they had no way of knowing that before they came back year, so we always keep the money earmarked for whoever that belonged to, so they never lose out." Sass adds. The interest accrued on these monies helps fund things like WI low-interest loans to municipalities and school libraries.
The State Treasurer has stated that one of the largest checks for WI unclaimed money handled by her office was in the amount of $750,000. All the more reason that Wisconsinites ought to do an unclaimed money search and learn if they have some WI 'cheese' being held by the State Treasurer.
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