Get Unclaimed Safety Deposit Box Contents Back

Millions of dollars is left behind every year in unclaimed safety deposit boxes; that money remains with the government. In every annual audit, banks give the content of safe deposit to the government after a specific period of time. The reason the content of safety deposit escheated to the government is that it is being lying in the bank untouched from the owner or heir of the deposit.

Many times, people move from one place to another, and during this move they forget their safety deposit box contents and consider that the content inside it has been lost forever. After this, most of the people do not even bother to find their contents, which results into transfer of the deposit to government account. Other than that, after moving to other places people tend forget the bank name and place where the deposit was made.

If a person does not know where he used to hold the safety deposit box, it is still every easy to find out if they have unclaimed property. These boxes are provided in the bank with a lease period. The safety deposit boxes lying in the bank with expired leases and without rental payment are automatically sent to the government for custody.

The dormancy period, which can range from one to five-years, is different from state to state. An important point to note is that the unclaimed safety deposit boxes are drilled out and the contents in the boxes are auctioned. The money used to purchase these contents is saved until the original owner of the box comes forward to claim it. To find the information on unclaimed safety deposit boxes, a person needs to fill an application form.

Unclaimed assets in a safety deposit box will be considered abandoned after the owners or heirs fail to communicate with the bank. When an account owner allows contents of these boxes to automatically rollover, or the correspondence send by the bank return, the safety deposit account is escheated. A person becomes entitled to receive unclaimed money after several years of account deactivation.

Finding unclaimed assets in safety deposit boxes was a tough job because the government did not take initiative to make databases with the names of lost assets owners, public. Nowadays, finding a lost asset or assets is extremely easy. In today’s time, any person can search for their lost contents belonging to an old safety deposit account easily in government websites or other paid websites that offer comprehensive information related to the safety deposit box.

The conditions of a search arise when there is a deceased family member or friend had a safe and it is abandoned for years, or if a person has changed the location and name. The end of the lease of an account also creates conditions for searching for unclaimed property in government database.