Reserching monies left from my deseased father.....?

Question

My father passed away 5 years ago. There was money left to my brothers and I when he passed. I was contacted by a company who said they were aware of monies that were in accounts. They want a finders fee, my father was in the service and had various accounts and securities. Does anyone kow how I can go about reserching this without paying a portion to a company?

Answer 1

By law in most of the U.S. states, when monies and other property are left unclaimed for a period of time, they are required to be reported to a state agency which identifies and administers the distribution of those accounts. Do an on-line search for your state's unclaimed property office. For example, if you lived in Texas, as I do, you would enter "Texas unclaimed property." I imagine there is an equivalent office at the federal level, and probably for the service as well. You can contact your nearest federal building for instructions on pursuing property at the federal and service level. That way you can cut these jackasses who are trying to take you to the cleaner out of the picture altogether.

I know that these offices exist, because, using this method, I have found several small sums of monies belonging to family members, including a deposit made to an electric company. The deposit was an unclaimed refund to my father, who had been dead more than twenties years by the time I found it.

Here are some websites to help get you started.

http://www.michigan.gov/treasury/0,1607,7-121-44435---,00.html

http://usgovinfo.about.com/blunclaimed.htm

Answer 2

2-9-2016 You can look at your father's probate file at the courthouse of the county where he died, and there will be financial information in it about his assets which will be very good clues to know where his assets were held, originally, but you will not necessarily need to contact those companies for more information because they were required by law to turn those assets into the unclaimed property department. If you know who the executor of his estate was, you should ask the executor to order a copy of the decedent's state income tax return and/or federal income tax return for the year he died and for the year before he died. If your search is not fruitful, negotiate with the finder company for a better rate--offer to pay them 10% instead of the larger percentage they are asking for, and most likely they will agree, since them getting something is better than them getting nothing.
Sometimes the fee is worth paying because these companies have access to information that the public can not get access to, but try to do your own research first.