Finance Wanted.

By Russ D Johnson

It's no secret that the Rocky Mountains run straight through Wyoming, but there's an even more exciting mountain, of more immediate interest to the less half of a million residents of the Equality State - a mountain of cash! Currently, the State Treasurer's Office is holding more than $26 million in Wyoming unclaimed money, and waiting for the rightful owners to come forward and take what is theirs'.

The State Treasurer's website lists the following as the most common types of property than can become "unclaimed": savings accounts, deposits, refunds, customer overpayments, insurance policies, endowments, and annuities, checking accounts, credit balances, uncashed dividends, moneys distributable from trusts, uncashed insurance claim payments, safe deposit box contents, stocks, money orders, traveler's checks. Each of these types of unclaimed property has it's own dormancy period, which is the amount of years that must pass before they are considered abandoned and law requires that they are turned over to the state. These dormancy periods vary greatly, but are most commonly 5 years in WY.

Although Wyoming has returned millions of dollars to the rightful owners, the vast majority remains unclaimed, and the primary reasons boil down to a lack of education about these assets. Luckily, Wyoming is a custodial state, which means they hold these monies indefinitely, and will never take possession of them. There is no expiration date on lost money.

As residents the state with the smallest population, people living in WY have great odds of discovering missing money in their name. But most people are unaware that other states may be holding funds belonging to them. You don't even have to have been to another state for another state to owe you money. Many companies have locations and/or offices in multiple states, but they can obviously only be headquartered in one place. For this reason, employees often lose track of money and never realize it even if they search, because the cash is being held by the state where their company is has its headquarters. Similarly, insurance companies may service many states, but they can only maintain one headquarters. Things like insurance overpayments will be turned over to the proper division in the state where the insurance company is incorporated, not necessarily the state where the insured person lives. These are just a few of the reasons that it's very important that people search outside of their home state.

Aside from limiting searches to one state, beginners often don't realize that they should search multiple times. In fact, they should search frequently. Because of the varying dormancy periods for each type of unclaimed fund, and because someone at the State Treasurer's Office has to manually put each record in to the system, the missing money list changes constantly. A search might come up empty one day, while searching the following day could produce a nice treasure for a diligent searcher.

Experienced searches have dozens of tactics that give them an edge when attempted to locate forgotten funds, and the wisest beginners learn about these and duplicate them in their own searches to insure they've discovered all possible claims.

Unclaimed money and property expert Russ Johnson has been assisting Americans in finding their unclaimed money online since 1997. His site, http://www.unclaimedmoney.net, is updated regularly and offers guaranteed official searches for Wyoming unclaimed money and missing money across the country.