January 22, 2012
Find Unclaimed Property in Wisconsin – Part 1 of 2
(Part 1 of 2)
Wisconsin houses a lot more American goodies than just cheese and milk. The Badger State is also home to Harley Davidson Motorcycles, the Green Bay Packers, and catfish (Potosi, WI). An amusing fact I just picked up about Green Bay that few know about is that it is also the world toilet paper capital. There's another type of paper that can be found piled up in Wisconsin's Treasury Dept. though – the green, good-smelling kind. Yep, Wisconsin unclaimed money amounting to almost $400 million is in the State Treasury's hands and they are looking to reunite it with over one million citizens who are owed their fair share.
Unclaimed funds are handed over to the Treasurer's Office when abandoned assets are not given back to the rightful owners after a given period. The 'dormancy period' for Wisconsin abandoned funds is 5 years. Lost money can come from numerous sources – lost or unused gift checks, uncashed savings and salary checks, forgotten bank accounts, lost traveler's checks, stock dividends, and other monies that have been forgotten about and lost track of. The only tangible assets covered in the Wisconsin Unclaimed Funds Law are the contents of safe deposit boxes that have been classified abandoned. The State Treasury Office tries to track down the owners of family heirlooms, pocket watches, sports cards, coins, jewelry, etc. but ultimately has to auction 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," said State Treasurer Dawn Marie Sass.
(to be continued)
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