MACON, Ga. – Vicki Lambert has a job that’s unusually cheerful. She’s in charge of taking unclaimed property that has fallen into Georgia custody and reuniting it with its rightful owners.
Last year, $24.7 million in property found its way home.
“It’s nice to be able to give money back when that’s not the way the world runs,” she said from her office at the Georgia Department of Revenue, where she’s director of local government services.
Money, stock and bond certificates, locks of hair, old photos, jewelry and collectibles end up with the revenue department when some custodian ends up with property but can’t find the owner.
Too bad for treasure hunters; there is no state vault overflowing with gold nuggets and rare antiques.
Actually, it’s mostly plain old money that comes from companies that need to pay someone whom they cannot find.
In the year ending in June 2011, the DOR received some $114 million in unclaimed cash.
“This could involve a paycheck; maybe you left your last employer and didn’t get your last paycheck,” said Lambert.
“You wouldn’t imagine people have a problem” with cashing checks, she said, “but they do.”
Every year Georgia companies must file a report with the DOR listing checks that haven’t been cashed, and they must send the money and everything they know about the owner to Lambert’s office. It stays there indefinitely — no statute of limitations — until it finds its home.
When the DOR calls the possible owner and announces a chance at a windfall, sometimes the person on the other end is skeptical.
They can get the DOR number online, though, “and call us (back). Sometimes they do that,” said Lambert. “They call back and ask for me, then we can talk through it.”
But there are also so-called “locators” who use the DOR list, contact the possible owner and offer to help reunite them – for a fee.
The public needs “to come to us, not go through a locator,” she said, because the DOR charges no administration fee.
Aside from the cash, Lambert’s office reunited about 50 safety deposit boxes with owners in 2011.
They do not bother to appraise these tangibles. An unclaimed lock of hair is worth the same as an ounce of gold to the DOR, because they are just holding it for the rightful owner.
There’s little point in considering the expense and legal issues around an auction either.
“It’s easier in this day and time to find people,” said Lambert.
Owners find her, too, via an online search at the DOR web site. A quick search for property owned by the city of Macon turns up 19 unclaimed properties. But it’s not likely to pay the bills. The entry, she said, could refer to a city of Macon bond or some other thing that is not city-owned.
Lambert’s office checks for local and state property several times a year and even sends that government the claim form for the property.
Every state has an unclaimed property office like Georgia’s, and all of them want to be found and searched. The National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators web site at http://unclaimed.org, by its last count in 2006, estimates the states together are holding some $32 billion. Their web site links to a nationwide unclaimed property search.
But it’s better not to lose property in the first place, Lambert opines.
A single transaction per year will keep a bank account from going dormant and eventually ending up in her books.
A safety deposit box will stay safe if the rent is paid. And all mail from mutual funds, insurance companies, banks should be read.
Lambert advised people “to stay on top of things and talk to their family members so that family treasures don’t end up here.”
After a death in the family for example, trying to figure out bank accounts and insurance policies can be like trying to put a puzzle together.
“I’m going to have a file out there that my kids can find that says, ‘This is where the checking account is, this is the insurance policy,’ ” she said.