It is not uncommon for individuals to receive letters, telephone calls or emails informing them that they are owed unclaimed money. Further, it is not uncommon for such a person to offer assistance in recovering the money. Of course, this service shall not be offered for free but shall be offered for a price. However, why should you pay to get what is already yours? Why should you pay to get your unclaimed money when you can get your unclaimed money with very little expenditure?

Be assured that the process of funds recovery or money finding, as it is also called, is not illegal. Such persons are called property locators or heir finders.

These individuals cannot charge a huge amount of money for providing the service to you. In fact, the law clearly provides the limit beyond which the person offering the unclaimed money recovery service cannot charge. The person is paid for performing the task of locating the money owed to you, locating you and connecting the two.

However, if you do not want to use the services of an intermediary and if you want to claim the money yourself, you can always go ahead and complete the formalities yourself.

Unclaimed money can come into existence through many financial transactions and financial instruments. The money that is lying idle in your old checking or savings accounts or the forgotten stocks, bonds, dividends, insurance policies, safe deposit boxes etc are the primary sources of unclaimed money. After a period of inactivity with no contact from the clients, the institutions hand over the money to the state.

Once, the state or the federal agency possess your money, they simply wait for you to come and claim it. Ideally speaking, the agencies are supposed to advertise the presence of unclaimed money owed to you. However, this rarely, if ever, happens and the individual remains unaware of the problem.

Now, if you want to find the unclaimed money all by yourself, this is what you should do. Firstly, you will have to search an unclaimed money database. This is the most efficient and effective way to initiate the process. You ought to use a database that covers all state and federal databases. Searching just one or few databases will render your search incomplete.

The all-in-one databases require payment of money if you want to access the same. However, to ensure that you do not incur unnecessary expenditure, you are allowed a free search to determine whether you are owed unclaimed money or not.

To determine whether you are owed unclaimed money or not is just the first step. Once this is done, the individual has to fill out the appropriate claim forms to initiate the process of recovery. The forms can be downloaded for free from most websites. Proof of identification and/ or proof of ownership of unclaimed money also have to be attached.

The agency holding your money will, naturally, verify your claim and the unclaimed money check should land at your doorstep within two to sixteen weeks.

Additional documentation may be required and the agency will contact you accordingly

This information is sufficient for you to find and claim the unclaimed money owed to you. The best part is that you do not have to pay anybody for the same.