One in 10 Missourians has $300 in lost money or property at the Missouri Treasurer's Office.
The state treasurer holds more than $1 billion belonging to about 6 million individual account holders through the state's unclaimed property program.
Unclaimed property consists of cash from abandoned bank accounts, stocks, bonds and safe deposit boxes, as well as uncollected insurance policy proceeds, government refunds, utility deposits and wages from past jobs.
The vault, housed in the lower level of the Truman State Office Building, also contains family heirlooms, jewelry, keepsakes, military medals and insignia, and other items from safe deposit boxes. Unclaimed property doesn't include real property such as land, houses, cars or boats.
Taxpayers, including individual Missouri residents, businesses and nonprofits, can file to claim their property any time online at ShowMeMoney.com. There are no deadlines for claiming lost property.
Treasurer Scott Fitzpatrick kicked off his fourth annual push to return unclaimed property during the holiday season Dec. 1.
"This is a really good time for people to search to see if they have unclaimed property over the next few months, because we'll be putting thousands and thousands of new owners on the system every day," said Scott Harper, the Treasurer's Office Unclaimed Property Division director for the past 35 years.
But many Missourians don't know they have unclaimed money or property. And the state is challenged in finding them.
How did the state get my property?
Banks, financial institutions, businesses, government agencies and other organizations turn over millions of dollars in taxpayer property to the state each year.
State law allows most asset holders to turn over property if there's no documented transaction or contact with the owner for five years. For governmental entities, and in a couple other instances, the period before the state takes possession is three years.
"Basically, if the account's dormant for five years, it's presumed abandoned ..." Fitzpatrick said. "Basically, the holder is required to escheat that property to the state under the unclaimed property laws. And that's pretty consistent across the country, I mean every state has unclaimed property laws and has an unclaimed property program."
As individual state programs, however, legislatures and state financial officers have administered handling of unclaimed property differently.
The legislative foundation for Missouri's unclaimed property program dates back to the mid-1980s to late 1990s, with some updates over the years.
In 2000, state law reduced the time unpaid insurance claims, utility funds, stocks and interest are turned over to the state. Before, holders would keep the property for seven years, now it is five.
The time before the state takes possession of uncollected employer paychecks and property held by local governments was reduced from five years to three years in 2015.
Abandoned property holders, such as banks with safe deposit boxes, report to the state Nov. 1 each year, except for unclaimed life insurance benefits, which are reported May 1.
When reporting abandoned property to the state, holders are required to record the last known name and address of each person considered to be an owner of property worth $50 or more, according to state statute. The reporting holder would also provide a description of the property, amount due to the owner, date when the property became payable or returnable and the last date of contact with the owner.
The law also requires property holders to notify the owners of $50 or more of the potential for an account or claim to be considered abandoned and "take necessary steps to prevent abandonment from being presumed."
"The holder shall exercise such reasonable and necessary diligence as is consistent with good business practice to ascertain the whereabouts of such owner of property valued at fifty dollars or more within one year prior to reporting the property to the state treasurer," the statute reads.
Harper said how closely that part of the law is followed depends on the holder.
"We have some really good holders that do some really significant effort into finding their owners and there's some that don't do as good a job," he said.
A majority of unclaimed property comes from companies out of state, he noted.
'A constant, ongoing process to battle'
After receiving abandoned property from holders, the Treasurer's Office catalogs the funds and items into a searchable database.
Most people can search the database for their name online at ShowMeMoney.com and begin the process to collect their unclaimed property. Depending on the parameters of the claim, Fitzpatrick said, the process could be done entirely online or involve printing a claim form, signing it, getting it notarized and mailing it to the Treasurer's Office.
The Treasurer's Office then verifies the claim and cuts a check.
Fitzpatrick's office promotes the program with radio and TV messages, online advertisements and social media posts.
Following state law, his office also sends a postcard to property owners who have a recorded address and at least $50 in unclaimed property each year.
The law also requires the Treasurer's Office to publish the names of unclaimed property owners in newspapers by June 30 each year. The advertisement, published at least once a week for two consecutive weeks, notes the names and last known address of the unclaimed property owner and asks them to respond.
Ideally, taxpayers claim their property before that, Harper said.
"If we can pay it out before we advertise it, which is the more expensive option, we're saving money," he said.
The Treasurer's Office also emails property owners who have made a claim in the past, Fitzpatrick said. It also gives state representatives and county treasurers lists of unclaimed property owners in their districts so outreach efforts come from familiar faces, he said.
The office has three employees called proactive specialists whose job it is to locate property owners owed $2,500 or more. Last year, the team returned about half of the total dollar amount returned through the unclaimed property program, but only a small portion of claims.
Their average returned claim is worth around $10,000, whereas the typical claim is $300.
"They do less claims, bigger dollars," Harper said.
The proactive contact can present some "interesting challenges," Fitzpatrick said.
"Sometimes it can take multiple attempts convincing somebody that you are in fact the person you say you are and you do in fact have money that belongs to them," he said, noting the frequency with which people think it's a scam.
Many people on the state's unclaimed property list likely don't realize they're missing and entitled to funds. The money could be an inheritance they didn't know about, contents left inside a bank's safe deposit box or uncashed paychecks.
Some unclaimed property owners may be difficult for the state to find, but others are known names and prominent businesses.
Gov. Mike Parson, for example, has $3.71 in unclaimed property linked to a Bolivar address tied to his 2009 state Senate campaign filings. Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe has at least $450 in unclaimed property tied to his days owning a Ford dealership.
The Catholic Diocese of Jefferson City has unclaimed property worth at least $50 and the Jefferson City Country Club has more than $100 in unclaimed property. Central Missouri Newspapers, the company that publishes the News Tribune, has $42.92 in unclaimed property.
A search of the online unclaimed property database shows at least 50 county sheriff offices throughout the state are owed unclaimed property, with amounts ranging from a few dollars to more than $50. Another search of Missouri school districts shows 113 have unclaimed property the state is holding.
Fitzpatrick said the proactive work his office does is better spent on individuals who can benefit from receiving money. His office often meets with county governments, which haven't reported unclaimed property being an issue, he said.
A lot of times, companies, counties and nonprofits file claims periodically because they could be getting new unclaimed property added to the database daily, Harper added.
"They're only going to do it once or twice a year," he said. "They're not going to do it every time it pops up."
"It's a constant and ongoing process that we battle," Harper continued. "We're aware. We don't like the way it looks. We try to get those people to claim their property."
In neighboring Illinois, taxpayers can automatically receive their state-held property without filing a claim.
In 2018, the state launched its Money Match program, which automatically returns up to $2,000 in unclaimed assets to residents using tax data from the Illinois Department of Revenue. After a letter confirming the taxpayer's address is sent, checks are mailed within about three weeks.
At least six other states, including Rhode Island, Wisconsin, Louisiana, South Dakota, North Carolina and Delaware, automatically return unclaimed property.
Illinois returned $180 million in unclaimed property the year before implementing automatic checks. Returns jumped to record levels in the years after, growing to more than $200 million, then $226 million and then $280 million last fiscal year.
Fitzpatrick has continuously broken unclaimed property records in Missouri, to a lesser degree.
The Treasurer's Office announced in July it returned more than $50.2 million in unclaimed property during the last fiscal year. It was slightly more than the $47.2 million record he set the year before.
The Treasurer's Office partnered with the Missouri Department of Social Services in 2019 to create an automated process for matching unclaimed property owners with past-due child support cases, which doled out $4.5 million to Missouri families owed child support.
Another partnership with the Missouri Department of Labor and Industrial Relations in 2020 automatically returned unclaimed property to owners who applied for unemployment benefits amid the COVID-19 pandemic. That partnership returned more than $8.8 million to nearly 30,000 Missourians.
When asked about partnering with the Missouri Department of Revenue to create an automatic system like other states, Fitzpatrick said there's no appetite because legal complications get in the way.
"Just the two agencies that we did partner with during my administration was a lot of work with getting the lawyers to agree on how the data was going to be treated and shared. And when you get into the Department of Revenue specifically, their individual taxpayer information is protected by law," he said. "For us to partner with the Department of Revenue, that would likely require the law to change to allow us to access their information. And the Department of Revenue is kind of not a big fan of changing that statute."
Fitzpatrick said there has been discussion about changing the laws protecting taxpayer information in other contexts, but not necessarily with unclaimed property.
"I do think it makes sense for that kind of cross-pollination of resources to take place," he continued. "If I was going to be here longer, it would probably be something I'd look at tackling, but I'm in my last month in this office, and so I'm not going to be able to do that."
Fitzpatrick, a Republican who was appointed by the governor to the treasurer position in 2018, was elected state auditor in November. He said the next treasurer, who Parson will appoint before the end of the year to serve out the remaining two years of Fitzpatrick's treasurer term, could make it a priority if he or she wants.
When asked about why he prioritized partnerships with the Department of Social Services and the Department of Labor, Fitzpatrick said the latter was a "ripe opportunity" because new unemployment claims amid the pandemic gave the state fresh contact data. He said the partnership with DSS came about because the department was already doing it manually on a "semi-regular basis."
"There were a lot of people hurting for money and we just thought it was very good timing to do what we could do," Harper said. "And then it's been so successful even on the back side of that. It's actually been surprising."
Fitzpatrick said he doesn't believe the unclaimed property program will be included in the Missouri Office of Administration's overhaul of state information systems, which will allow several government agencies and functions to communicate better and streamline resident use of government services through a single online portal.
What else does the state do with my property?
As allowed by state law, the Treasurer's Office conducts unclaimed property auctions to sell items that haven't been claimed by their owners after two years. It can destroy items that don't have commercial value at any time.
Revenue from an item's auction goes to the account of the original owner. Starting in 2010, the law prevents the state from selling military medals and honors.
The state keeps all unclaimed property funds in the Abandoned Fund Account.
The Treasurer's Office pays property claims out of the account and funds the unclaimed property program with the funds. Most of it, however, is required by state law to transfer to Missouri's General Revenue Fund each year.
The transfer can be triggered when the Abandoned Fund Account contains more than one-twelfth -- or 8.3 percent -- of the last fiscal year's total disbursement from the account, and has to be done at least once a year. In other words, about 90 percent of the unclaimed property the state receives in any given year is sent to state coffers.
Fitzpatrick said the transfer ramped up from around $35 million in the past to near $60 million this year.
"In a typical year, yeah, historically that's been a pretty significant amount going into the general revenue fund," Fitzpatrick said. "In more recent years, it's not as significant relative to what's going on with the state's budget situation."
Net General Revenue tax receipts are expected to be $13.1 billion for the current fiscal year, according to the annual consensus revenue estimate the state released Tuesday.
If the Abandoned Fund Account falls below one-twenty-fourth -- or 4.16 percent -- of the last fiscal year's total disbursement from the account, the Treasurer's Office can transfer from the state's general revenue fund to restore the balance to one-twelfth of last year's disbursements.
Missouri was one of several states during the past couple decades to accelerate the pace at which it takes possession of unclaimed property from holders, according to a 2015 report from the Associated Press. Some states used the increase in revenue to cushion or balance their budgets.
Delaware, for example, turned unclaimed property into its third largest source of state revenue and was paying out nearly 30 percent fewer claims than what the rest of the country was averaging.
Missouri isn't that extreme, Harper said.
"Our return ratio, compared to a state like Delaware, is totally different," Harper said. "We return so much more as a percentage."
Reducing the time it takes his department to gain possession of abandoned property increases the chance the state has of locating the owner, he said, noting everything the state receives is something that the holder already couldn't find.
Fitzpatrick said Missourians are used to the government expecting something from them so it's often a surprise when the government is calling with something to return to them.
"There's nothing else like it, where you're helping somebody without them asking," he said. "You're going and saying, 'Hey, we have this thing that's yours and we want to give it back to you.' This is the only thing I can come up with in government, state or federal, that operates like that."
Filing a claim
The fastest and most efficient way to check on unclaimed property and file a claim is online at ShowMeMoney.com.
More than half of individuals with unclaimed property can file a paperless claim, according to the Treasurer's Office.
Taxpayers can also visit or write a letter to the Treasurer's Office Unclaimed Property Division, P.O. Box 1004, Jefferson City, MO 65102. The letter should contain a list of owner names, addresses and previous addresses, if known.
The state will send a claim form with instructions regarding necessary documentation back. It then verifies the claim with its records of owners and legal heirs.
Claims processing is a free public service.
Julie Smith/News Tribune Car stereos, laptops, dvd players for vehicles, hard hats and items too numerous to mention have been left in safety deposit boxes and are now in the state's Unclaimed Property bins.
Julie Smith/News Tribune Shelves containing rows and rows of large manila folders containing items found in safety deposit boxes, marked with a file number and the word "sale" on it line a wall in the State Treasurer's Office Unclaimed Property Office in the basement of the Truman Building.
Julie Smith/News Tribune One has to wonder why a leather toiletries bag was left in safety deposit boxes and over the years staff from the the Missouri State Treasurer's Office have transferred them to the Unclaimed Property Division where they are cataloged and placed in envelopes or in a safe.
Julie Smith/News Tribune Items like this virtual reality headset have been left in safety deposit boxes and over the years staff from the the Missouri State Treasurer's Office have transferred them to the Unclaimed Property Division where they are cataloged and placed in envelopes or in a safe. Some of the items beg the question as to why they were put in a safety deposit box.