Americans leave tens of billions of dollars unclaimed every year.
From forgotten bank accounts, savings bonds, and death benefit payments, there are many financial institutions out there unable to distribute these unclaimed funds.
You may have moved or forgotten about such assets long ago. Sometimes a bank or credit union closes and is unable to contact former account holders.
Here are four places where you can check for unclaimed funds.
Unclaimed shares from a credit union
The National Credit Union Administration has a listing for unclaimed deposits that you can peruse.
A local credit union may close for a variety of reasons, but a primary one is because its federal insurance coverage may have been liquidated.
In such situations, the deposits, shares, or surplus funds generated due to liquidation must be distributed to former account holders.
If you have ever owned a credit union account before, especially in another state, you should check out the NCUA’s site.
TreasuryDirect’s unclaimed bonds initiative
It is not uncommon for multi-generational families to forget about a treasury bond that was purchased years or decades ago.
If you find a savings bond that was issued decades ago but stopped accruing interest, you should still be able to cash it.
Log onto TreasuryDirect’s Treasury Hunt initiative to check if the savings bond is still viable.
You may be able to cash a savings bond that is over 30 years old.
Unclaimed funds from bankruptcy court filing
Just because you claimed bankruptcy at some point in your life does not mean that you go completely flat broke.
A court judgment may have granted you, another claimant, beneficiary, or successor to your estate money after the finalization of bankruptcy.
In most cases, the original claimant may have died resulting in cascading bureaucratic inability to find other claimants, beneficiaries, or successors.
You, or anyone else you know who has ever claimed bankruptcy should check the website maintained by U.S. Courts to check for unclaimed funds.
Unclaimed life insurance death benefits
There are many reasons why you may be oblivious to the fact that you are the beneficiary of someone’s life insurance policy and have unclaimed money waiting for you.
The policyholder may have died before informing you that you are a death beneficiary.
The life insurance company may be unaware the beneficiary died for a while and unaware that you were a beneficiary.
When a life insurance company transitions from a private to a publicly-traded company, the process is called a demutualization.
And after a demutualization, your entitlement to death benefits could be lost to bureaucratic formalities.
Check Demutualization Claims to see if you have unclaimed death benefits.
