How do I find stock I own when I do not have the kind or information on it?

Question

I'm divorce and my X through out my paperwork on my stock I own, so I have know idea what kind of stock and with whom?

I have shares, it was just a notice, I remember telling me how many shares I had. But I do not know with whom or remember how many shares. It was part of an inheritance. Isn't their any way you can search by my name?

Answer 1

Suze Y has a good idea with going through the IRS. Another way, what law firm handled the estate? They will have records of what you inherited. Also if the stock is in your name, annual meeting season is just starting and companies are mailing out annual reports and voting instructions. Make sure the post office has your new address and forwards the mail to you.
As a last resort, if the company/broker can not get a hold of you, and their mail to you is returned, in about 5 years they declare the account inactive/lost owner and sent the money to the state in which you lived when you got the last notice. Then you can contact that state's office of unclaimed property (the governor's or sec. of state's office will know how to contact them, or google XYZ state office of unclaimed property), they will search for free, don't pay anyone to search for you, then you can get some money back.

Answer 2

You'd need to know what company you own stock in.

Was this a stock certificate that was thrown out? Most stock nowadays is just held by the broker. You don't see a lot of stock certificates being issued anymore. In fact, I don't think I've seen one in probably 25 years or so.

But if it's a lost stock certificate, you'd need to know what company it is then contact their investor relations to get a replacement.

Answer to additional details: To do a search by your name, you still are going to have to know what company you own shares in. There are literally thousands of companies traded on the various exchanges in the U.S. and each of those companies has literally thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of share holders. It's not even possible to keep a list of every shareholder of every publicly traded company on one big list.

Would it be possible to go back to the will and see what it says? If you inherited this stock, the will should say something like "I leave my nephew Johnny, 500 shares of xyz corp. stock. At least you'd have a starting point that way. You could then contact xyz corp and tell them you lost your stock certificate and get it replaced. You'd have to show them the something from the probate court anyway to get the shares transferred from whoever you inherited from into your name.

Answer 3

I think I would start with looking at a copy of your prior year's tax return. If you ex took off with that as well, you can get a copy from the IRS (http://www.irs.gov).

Once you get a copy of the tax return, you can look and see how your dividends are reported. If they're through a brokerage, your next step would be to contact the brokerage and tell them that all of your records were lost (they really don't need the gory details as to why) and you need to get copies. If your stocks were held by you, then you'll need to contact the investor relations departments of all of the companies shown on your return and ask what it will take to get copies of the certificates (it's not cheap, I'll tell you that).

I would think the real concern here is your ex selling your positions in the stock. Was your spouse's name on the stocks? If so, you have a different issue to deal with and you should probably contact your attorney.

Good luck!

Answer 4

Do you have the stock with a broker? If so, that'd be a good place to get the info.

If you had actual shares of the stock, then that's a lot tougher. And knowing the name would be pretty important as you'd need to contact the company next to see if they can reissue you new shares.

Outside of that, your ex might have just thrown away money. Sorry about that.

Best of luck remembering!

Answer 5

i would say its time to sue your EX for that BS