(Part 1 of 2)

As of October 2007, it was determined by the State Treasurer's Office of S. Carolina that the state is currently holding two hundred million dollars that belongs to residents who need only come forward and claim it, if they can locate it. In spite of improved efforts to reunite South Carolina unclaimed money with its rightful owners, which actually lead to a record return of 900 thousand dollars in Sept. 2007, the pile of money continues to grow.

Annually, S. Carolina, like most states, continues to take in more money than it's able to return to the people. The primary problem is the fact that the majority of people are completely unaware that these funds even exist, which is obvious, or they would likely never have abandoned them long enough for them to be considered "unclaimed". Even those who are aware of the billions of dollars in unclaimed funds all across the country usually don't have a clue how to go about tracking them down.

S. Carolina is what is called a "custodial state", which means that they don't ever actually own your money, they simply hold on to them for you, and there is no time frame under which you must claim your cash. Even though there are dozens of different kinds of unclaimed funds, the state treasurer names the following as the most common types under the Palmetto Payback Program: uncashed checks (including paychecks), dormant bank accounts, forgotten utility deposits, unclaimed insurance proceeds, unexchanged shares of stock, and uncashed dividend checks.

S. Carolina unclaimed money is given to the state treasurer's office after lengthy periods of inactivity. These periods are called "dormancy periods", and each kind of unclaimed cash has its own. Many are just a year, but many years have to pass for some types of assets to be given to the state. On top of that, a state employee has to actually input the claim information in to the state's database %if there is to be% public, searchable listing. For these reasons, among others, it is very important that anyone who is serious about locating their missing money, search often and search on the proper web sites.

(to be continued)

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This post comes from Brandon Ballenger at partner site

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