Wisconsin Unclaimed Money Totals 339 Million Dollars
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009Wisconsin is home to a lot more American goodies than just milk and cheese. The Badger State is also home to catfish (Potosi, WI), Harley Davidson Motorcycles and the Green Bay Packers. An amusing fact I just found out about Green Bay that few know about is that it’s also the toilet paper capital of the world. There’s another kind of paper that can be found piled-up in Wisconsin’s Treasury Department though- the green, good-smelling kind. Yep, Wisconsin unclaimed money amounting to almost $400 million is in the State Treasurer’s hands and she’s looking to reunite it www prepaid legal services over a million people who are owed their fair share.
Unclaimed property is turned over to the Treasurer’s Office when lost assets aren’t returned to their owners after a given period. The ‘dormancy period’ for Wisconsin abandoned funds is 5 years. Lost assets can come from several sources- lost or unused gift checks, uncashed savings and salary checks, forgotten bank accounts, lost traveler’s checks, stock dividends, and other financial assets that have been forgotten about and lost-track of. The only tangible assets under the Wisconsin Unclaimed Property Law are contents of safety boxes that have been deemed abandoned. The State Treasurer’s Office tries to locate the owners of jewelry, coins, sports cards, pocket watches, family heirlooms, etc. but ultimately has to auction them off at eBay after 3 years. “There are a lot of safety boxes that get turned over to us which a lot of p00003245eople don’t tell their kids, ‘Hey we have a safety box.’ So we actively search for those owners for three years and if we can’t find them we auction off the contents of the boxes. We do that on eBay,” State Treasurer Dawn Marie Sass said.
According to Wisconsin’s State Treasurer in a recent interview on a report by the Wisconsin Radio Network , they just run-out of space to store all the unclaimed assets as they keep piling-up every year. “We do actively search for people for up to three years and then after that time, because we don’t have a lot of space, we do have these auctions”, she said in a recent report. The proceeds from these items are then held by the state like other forgotten monetary assets and are used by the state until their owners come to claim them. “Until we can find an owner or an heir, yes, we do use the profits to support our office…”, says Sass. These funds from auctioned unclaimed items in Wisconsin can still be claimed at any time though. “You know there are people who, you know, may be in the service and are stationed over seas for five, six, seven years and then they come back and realize that their, you know, mother’s safety box was turned over. So, you know, they had no way of knowing that before they came back year, so we always keep the money earmarked for whoever that belonged to, so they never lose out.” the Treasurer adds. The interest the accrued on these monies helps fund things like Wisconsin school libraries and low-interest loans to municipalities.
According to the State Treasurer, one of the biggest checks for Wisconsin unclaimed money handled by her office was worth $750,000. All the more reason that residents should do an unclaimed money search and see if they have some Wisconsin ‘cheddar’ with the State Treasurer.
unclaimedmoney.netUnclaimed money and property expert Russ Johnson has been assisting Americans in finding their unclaimed money online since 1997. His site, cheap generic Levitra is Viagra info regularly and offers guaranteed official searches for unclaimedmoney.net/state-unclaimed-money/wisconsin.htmlWisconsin unclaimed money and missing money across the country.