For the third consecutive year, New Jersey’s Unclaimed Property Administration (UPA) has broken its record for returning missing assets to rightful owners.
In Fiscal Year 2024, UPA returned $261.4 million in assets, resulting from 109,181 claims paid by the agency. This effort far surpassed UPA's previous record set in Fiscal Year 2023 when $202.95 million in assets were returned via 73,686 claims paid. In 2022, $164.13 million in assets were returned via 50,867 claims paid. More than $2.7 billion has been returned since the inception of the program.
Unclaimed property is a mechanism for the State of New Jersey to safeguard property that has been abandoned or lost for three years. It can include bank accounts, utility deposits, insurance payouts, and even real physical property.
“From hosting community outreach events to maintaining a free, convenient website for users to search for missing assets, Treasury’s Unclaimed Property Administration goes above and beyond to recover and safeguard funds for New Jerseyans across our state,” said State Treasurer Elizabeth Maher Muoio. “In the past several years, UPA has stepped up efforts to reunite residents with unclaimed assets, and the results have been astounding. I applaud the entire UPA team for delivering another record-breaking year.”
“I’m proud of the work we’ve done this year to further our mission of reuniting unclaimed property with as many rightful owners as we possibly can,” said Unclaimed Property Administrator Steve Harris. “We encourage all New Jerseyans to take a few minutes to search for their name on our website, unclaimedproperty.nj.gov. There may be funds in your name being safeguarded by the State that you are entitled to – with interest.”
UPA's Outreach Team focuses on reuniting abandoned property with its owners through various outreach initiatives including mass mailings, media campaigns, and attendance at state fairs, community centers and other public locations and events throughout the year. UPA hosted or participated in 40 outreach events in FY24.
UPA also publishes a list each summer in newspapers across New Jersey of all of the names of people who had property turned over to the State within the past year. This year’s ad, due to publish in August will include over 231,000 names.
Additionally, UPA works with legislative district offices to communicate with constituents. Through this collaboration about 23,000 residents will be notified in the coming weeks that the State is holding their unclaimed property.
Nearly 33 million people in the United States – one in every ten – have unclaimed property: financial accounts or items of value where no activity has been initiated by the owner for several years. When that happens and if companies cannot locate owners; money or properties are submitted back into state control commonly including unpaid life insurance benefits forgotten bank accounts utility deposits unused rebate cards among others
While certain third-party companies charge fees connecting individuals' assets there is never any charge searching UPAs database claiming property's securely online once approved asset returns rightfully owner interest included
Anyone can search their name on unclaimedproperty.nj.gov or www.unclaimed.org freely determining if states hold properties individuals encouraged searching maiden names business nonprofit entities too
