What is a holder?

The short answer

Under state abandoned-funds laws, a holder is any business, organization, or government body that has possession of money or property belonging to someone else. Your bank is the holder of your savings account. Your insurer is the holder of a policy’s benefit. Your employer is the holder of a paycheck you haven’t cashed.

Most of the time, the holder and the owner stay in touch and nothing unusual happens. When they lose contact, state law tells the holder exactly what to do next, and it ends with the property being sent to the state for safekeeping.

Who counts as a holder?

Almost every organization that pays or owes money to people can become a holder. The most common are:

Which state gets the property?

The rules for which state receives abandoned funds were set by the U.S. Supreme Court. Property generally goes to the state of the owner’s last known address in the holder’s records. If the holder has no address for the owner, the property goes to the state where the holder is incorporated.

That’s why people often have property in states they left years ago, and why a company headquartered in one state may report property to dozens of others.

What happens to the holder afterward?

Once a holder reports and delivers property to the state, the state takes over responsibility for returning it. The holder is generally relieved of liability for that property, and any claim from the owner goes to the state instead.

When the holder and the owner are both businesses

Businesses are owners too. A company can be owed vendor refunds, customer credits, or payments from another business that were never delivered. After mergers and acquisitions, those assets are easy to lose track of. We help businesses, agencies, and nonprofits recover property held for them.

This page is general information. Reporting deadlines, dormancy periods, and notice rules vary by state.