Inactive Bank Accounts - Can the government take them?

Govt can also take your home if you abandon it.

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well, I have an account that I have not touched in 15 years and I damn sure still want it...

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If your banker contact person knows you're still alive and living where they think you live, you're fine even if your account has not had any customer activity in it for years.

It's called an "escheat" law where abandoned property of any kind, where there is no knowledge of where the owner is, escheats to the state of Louisiana. (I can't speak for other states. I'm only familiar with the Louisiana escheat law.)

For banks, they must make a series of attempts to contact the account holder....phone calls, mail, registered mail, personal visits to the last known address, etc., before the account balance is turned over to the state of Louisiana. The escheat process takes years counting the dormancy period of the account.

However, if an account holder's balance in an account escheats to the state, all the account holder has to do to reclaim his money is contact the Louisiana Treasurer's office and he can get the money back.

The last I checked there is no time limit for when it comes to how long the account owner can re-claim his money. The state's Treasurer's office has a list of all property that has escheated to the state on its website. Anybody with access to the internet can find out if anything of his has escheated.

Some of the most common types of escheated property are abandoned utility deposits where the homeowner or apartment renter moves and forgets to get his telephone, water, electricity deposit back or notify his service provider what his forwarding address is. The utility service provider mails his refund and it's returned. After so many attempts and so many years of not being able to get the customer's money back to him, the deposit money escheats to the state.

I just got $120 last week of my unclaimed property because of a thread like this not too long ago

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Govt can also take your home if you abandon it.

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And private parties can take your land if you abandon it (for a REALLY long time)

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The last I checked there is no time limit for when it comes to how long the account owner can re-claim his money.

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Some of my relatives found $35 that was owed to their deceased grandparents. There were actually I think 8 or 9 different heirs. They actually went through all the paperwork needed to claim the $35 and split it between the many heirs.