(Part 1 of 2)

Considering that the Dept. of Finance's Division of Revenue took in more than 364 million dollars in Delaware unclaimed money in 2006 alone, it is safe to assume that the state is holding many more hundreds of millions, and likely over a billion dollars in lost money, that is owed to regular people who just need to step forward and claim it. There are tens of billions in forgotten funds across the nation, but Delaware holds a exceptionally large chunk of it because it is home to such a large number of corporations' headquarters.

On top of the issues of not knowing where and how often to search, most Americans do not realize that they could be owed Delaware unclaimed money even if they've never lived in or even passed through the The Small Wonder. Over the years Delaware has become the go to state for putting down a company's headquarters. When companies have locations and branches in other states, unclaimed paychecks will not be handed over to the treasury departments of those states, they will be reverted to Delaware. Because of this, a citizen looking to find missing money would find no record of their property in the state they live in, and would probably never check Delaware's records.

In addition to non-Delaware residents possibly finding unclaimed money in Delaware, Delaware residents might be owed cash from other states. For starters, there are obviously many companies that are incorporated in other states that employ people living in in Delaware, but there are other reasons, like insurance overpayments, that could leave a Delaware resident's abandoned funds stuck in some other state.

Once people become aware of unclaimed money, and even once they realize that they could be owed money from multiple states, they usually just do one quick search and believe that whatever the search results say is the end of the story. Sadly, not all unclaimed money web sites the same, and there is not one search that checks the records of all states. Even after you break it down to the state level, the records are often very unreliable because they aren't updated in real time.

(to be continued)

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Take 5 minutes to do a quick online check for funds you might have lost track of.