Executor's checklist for unclaimed property

The deceased's papers — bank statements, tax returns, insurance policies, investment account statements — capture what they remembered. Everything else is missing by definition. Common categories of property that escape the standard inventory: - Accounts at banks acquired or closed since the deceased last interacted with them - Stock from employers, demutualization, or corporate spinoffs the deceased never registered - Pension benefits at employers from 30+ years ago - Life insurance from a forgotten group plan - Refund checks the deceased never deposited - Safe deposit box contents inventoried after the box was deemed abandoned - Savings bonds bought as gifts decades earlier State unclaimed-property divisions hold roughly $80 billion nationally per NAUPA estimates. A non-trivial fraction belongs to people whose executors never ran the search. The work below takes a few hours; the typical recovery for an active 40-year career is somewhere between $0 and $30,000.

Start with the broadest sweep. Run The Missing Mint search under every name variant the deceased ever used. The search covers every state portal in a single query, including Delaware (corporate-issued property) and the District of Columbia. For any state that returns property, click through to the state's official portal for the heir-claim path. Hawaii is the only state that does not participate in MissingMoney.com, so search Hawaii's portal directly if the deceased had any connection there. Search the deceased's name plus their spouse's name plus any business names they operated under (sole proprietorships and DBA names sometimes hold property separately). For anything found, note: holding state, dollar amount, holder name, last reported address, and the state's processing-time estimate. The multi-state-claim guide covers parallel filing strategy.

If the deceased ever worked at a company with a defined-benefit pension plan, search the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation's database at pbgc.gov/wr/find-an-unclaimed-pension. The PBGC takes over pensions from terminated plans and holds benefits for participants and beneficiaries it can't locate. The database is searchable by name and lists missing participants by company. If a hit comes up, the PBGC has a heir-claim process requiring death certificate, beneficiary documentation, and identification. Benefits can be paid as a lump sum or annuity depending on the original plan. This is one of the highest-yield items on the checklist for anyone who worked for a major industrial, transportation, or financial-services company that has since been acquired or gone bankrupt — Bethlehem Steel, Pan Am, Eastern Airlines, Polaroid, etc. all have PBGC-administered residual pensions.

The Department of Labor launched its Retirement Savings Lost & Found Database in 2024. Search at dol.gov for accounts in defined-contribution plans (401(k), 403(b), profit-sharing) where the deceased was a participant or beneficiary. This covers the modern retirement-plan equivalent of the PBGC's defined-benefit coverage. Especially relevant for anyone who left employers between jobs without rolling over a small 401(k) balance — the plan administrator often eventually escheats the account or transfers it to a default IRA, and the participant loses track. Claim documentation: death certificate, plan participant identification, and beneficiary or executor documentation.

The IRS does not maintain a public locator, but it does hold unclaimed refunds. Two paths: - **File the deceased's final tax return.** Any refund owed for the year of death gets paid to the estate. Form 1310 (Statement of Person Claiming Refund Due a Deceased Taxpayer) accompanies the return. - **File for refunds from prior unfiled years.** The IRS allows refund claims for up to three years past the original filing deadline. If the deceased had unfiled returns and was due refunds, the executor can file those returns to claim them. IRS Pub. 559 ("Survivors, Executors, and Administrators") walks the rules. Refunds paid more than three years late are forfeited to the U.S. Treasury, so timing matters.

U.S. savings bonds owned by the deceased are not held by state unclaimed-property divisions. They sit in TreasuryDirect's separate database. The retired TreasuryHunt service is replaced by: - **TreasuryDirect search** at treasurydirect.gov for any account login the deceased had - **FS Form 1048** to request a search of Treasury records by name and Social Security number for paper bonds (lost, stolen, or never registered electronically) - **FS Form 1455** for redemption of paper bonds by an heir Bonds bought in the 1960s through 1990s for children and grandchildren as gifts are the most commonly forgotten. A $25 Series E bond from 1970 has matured to several hundred dollars at full value. The inherited-savings-bonds guide covers the process in detail.

The National Association of Insurance Commissioners runs a free life insurance policy locator at eapps.naic.org/life-policy-locator. Submit the deceased's information and the request gets sent to participating U.S. insurers; any insurer with a matching policy contacts you within about 90 days. Most major U.S. life insurers participate. Coverage is not 100% but it is the single highest-yield first step for life insurance. Documentation: death certificate, deceased's full name and any prior names, SSN, date of birth, date of death, last known address, your relationship to the deceased. Group life insurance through current or former employers is the most commonly forgotten policy. Even a $25,000 group benefit is automatic for many employees. Contact every former employer's HR department directly in addition to the NAIC search.

If the deceased served in the U.S. military, they may have had Servicemembers' Group Life Insurance (SGLI) or Veterans' Group Life Insurance (VGLI). Contact the VA Insurance Center at 800-669-8477 or insurance.va.gov. Veterans' benefits also include possible burial benefits, dependency and indemnity compensation (DIC) for surviving spouses, and pension benefits the deceased never claimed in their lifetime. The VA can search records by name, service number, or SSN. Documentation: DD-214, death certificate, beneficiary or surviving-spouse documentation.

Contact every bank, brokerage, credit union, and insurance company the deceased ever did business with — even ones they hadn't used in decades. Many institutions have moved or merged, so check the FDIC bank merger database to identify the successor bank for any institution the deceased mentioned in old papers. Specific items to ask each institution: - Any account in the deceased's name (active or closed) - Any account where the deceased was beneficiary or POD designee - Any safe deposit box (current or terminated) - Any escrow account from a closed mortgage Most institutions will require the death certificate plus letters testamentary or a small-estate affidavit before disclosing account details to an executor.

Every former employer can hold: - Final paycheck (often forgotten) - Group life insurance (per Item 6) - Pension benefits (per Item 2) - 401(k) or other retirement balances (per Item 3) - Unvested or vested employer stock - Deferred compensation - Health Savings Account (HSA) balances - Health Reimbursement Arrangement (HRA) balances For executive-compensation claims, deferred comp can be substantial. Contact each former employer's HR or benefits department directly with the death certificate and executor documentation. Companies acquired or merged forward the benefits to the successor; companies that went bankrupt route benefits to PBGC (per Item 2).

Re-run Items 1, 2, 3, and 6 under every name variant: maiden name, middle name as first, anglicized name, nicknames, common misspellings, initials only. Property is filed under the name on the original account, which often differs from the legal name at death. Also re-run with the deceased's prior addresses if the search portal allows address-specific filtering. Some state portals match on partial address; others don't. The multi-state-claim guide walks the address-history methodology in detail.

If the deceased ever had an FHA-insured mortgage that was paid off, refinanced, or otherwise terminated, they may be owed an FHA mortgage insurance refund. Search at hud.gov/program_offices/housing/comp/refunds. The HUD database is separate from state unclaimed-property and from anything else on this list. Refunds can also exist for HUD-related items like Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund distributions. Documentation: deceased's information, FHA case number (if known), mortgage payoff records.

Increasingly relevant. If the deceased held cryptocurrency on a U.S. exchange (Coinbase, Kraken, Gemini, etc.), the exchange has an estate-claim process for handing over assets to heirs. Documentation: death certificate, letters testamentary, the deceased's account information. For self-custody wallets (cold storage, hardware wallets), the executor needs the seed phrase. If the deceased didn't leave one, the assets are unrecoverable. This is the modern equivalent of forgotten safe deposit boxes — except worse, because there's no state escheatment process for self-custody crypto. Look in the deceased's papers, password manager, and safe deposit box for any seed phrase or wallet recovery information.

Each item above is a free public search the executor can run directly. State finder-fee statutes (10% in most states, up to 30% in some) cap the percentage a finder can charge, and most states bar finder contracts entirely for the first 18 to 24 months after the property is reported. Federal databases (PBGC, DOL, TreasuryDirect, NAIC, VA) charge nothing for searches and have no legal cap on what a finder can extract — but the work is just a search. The heir packet we publish covers the documentation needed for each category. Run the sweep yourself.

Block out an afternoon. Open the multi-state search. Run each item on the list, in order. Track results in a spreadsheet with columns for source, name searched, hits, dollar amount, and next action. By the end of the afternoon you'll have a complete picture of the deceased's recoverable forgotten assets and a queue of claims to file. For multi-state recovery, file claims in parallel using the multi-state-claim guide. For specific procedural questions, the letters-testamentary and small-estate-affidavit guides cover the documentation. Most executors who run this checklist find more than they expect.