How to Find Unclaimed Money or Property

When the Texas Department of Transportation decided to cancel my toll tag for lack of use (during the COVID lockdown, which was really genius on their part), I received an email after the fact. So, I contacted them to find out how to get my $40+ I kept in their account to make sure my tolls were always covered.

I was told that I could claim my funds with the department that handles unclaimed funds and property in the state of Texas. And I could do that after eight months (which is yet another bonehead policy on the part of TxDOT, but I digress).

When my reminder popped up that it was time to file, I went to the Texas Comptroller’s website. I was familiar with the process because I’ve helped clients recover funds in this way. As long as I was there, I decided to do a quick search for family members. Lo’ and behold, several of them had funds waiting to be claimed.

Even if you think you’ve tracked your money well, there’s always the possibility that an insurance, title, escrow or some other company wound up holding funds that should belong to you and turned the funds over to the state when they were auditing their company records. Five minutes of your time could net you a few bucks, so here’s what you need to do:

Locate your state comptroller’s website.

This is an important first step because there are many websites out there that come up in Google searches, promising to return funds to you. Some of those websites are legitimate, and they charge a fee for their services. Some of those websites are scams. They collect your information, then use it to commit identity theft or sell your information on the black market. Make sure you are at your comptroller’s website or your state’s tax and revenue website and only use links directly from their website. In the state of Texas, you’ll be directed to ClaimItTexas.org, which is a separate website run by the state’s comptroller.

Find the Unclaimed Property section.

Sometimes there’s a menu item or button for this on the home page. If not, use their website’s search box to locate the Unclaimed Property section or their referral to a legitimate third-party website.

Search the website.

You can do this by name or by address. I also search by common misspellings of my name.

Verify the funds are yours.

Other people in the database you’re searching might have your same first and last name, so you’ll want to verify that you have indeed done business with any companies that populate your search results.

Have your proof ready.

In most cases, you’ll need to provide a scanned copy of your driver’s license, social security card, and some type of proof that you had an account or dealings with the company. This is why it’s absolutely vital to make sure that you’re dealing with a legitimate website/entity.

Most comptroller’s offices do not charge a fee for this claim service. You can verify this on your state’s website.

I notified the family members who came up in my Texas search. This led one sister-in-law to search a different state of residence from twenty years prior. She filed with that state for $500 in unclaimed funds. Not bad for a few minutes of time!

For more information about document and file management (which can pay major dividends when you need proof for unclaimed money), check out The Inefficiency Assassin: Time Management Tactics for Working Smarter, Not Longer.