How to Find Unclaimed Property Left by a Deceased Relative in California

California is holding $12.497 billion in unclaimed property, spread across 86,905,430 separate properties, and 98.1% of it has never been claimed by anyone. If a relative died in California and left money behind, that money does not disappear. It sits with the State Controller's Office until someone claims it, and there is no deadline to do so.

Unclaimed property from a deceased owner can be claimed by an heir, a trustee, or the personal representative of the estate. What you need to prove depends on how the person died and how big the estate is. Below is how to search, who is allowed to claim, what documentation the state asks for, how long it takes, and what it means if the estate is already in probate.

What Unclaimed Property Means in California

Unclaimed property is money or securities a business could not return to its owner, which state law then requires the business to turn over to the State Controller. Bank accounts, uncashed checks, insurance benefits, wages, stocks and safe deposit box contents all qualify. The state holds it indefinitely.

The process is called escheat. A business that cannot reach an owner for a set dormancy period reports the property to the state, and the state becomes the custodian. Before that transfer happens, the Controller's Office sends a notice to any owner with securities, safe deposit box contents, or property worth $50 or more.

Death is one of the most common reasons property goes unclaimed. Someone dies, an insurer cannot locate the beneficiary, a final paycheck is never cashed, or a bank account nobody in the family knew about goes dormant. The money then sits in state custody, often for decades.

How to Search for a Deceased Relative's Unclaimed Property

Search free at the State Controller's official site, claimit.ca.gov (opens in a new tab). Enter the deceased person's last name and first name. The search covers every property in the state's public database regardless of value, and it costs nothing. No private service can find anything this search cannot.

Search more than one spelling. State records reflect whatever the reporting business had on file, which is frequently wrong or abbreviated. Try maiden names, married names, middle initials, common misspellings, and nicknames that appear on old accounts.

Search old addresses too. Property is filed under the last address the business had, which for a person who moved several times may be a home they left 30 years ago. If you know where a relative lived in the 1980s or 1990s, search that city.

Each result carries a Property ID, a unique number the state assigns. Write it down. You will use it on the claim form and on every piece of correspondence about the claim.

Ignore anyone who offers to find it for a fee

Companies called asset locators or heir finders monitor this same public database and send letters offering to recover the money for a cut. California law caps what they can charge at 10% of the property's value under Code of Civil Procedure section 1582 (opens in a new tab), and they cannot sign you to a contract until after the property has already been transferred to the state.

You do not need one. The search is free, the claim form is free, and the state charges nothing to return your money.

Who Can Claim a Deceased Person's Unclaimed Property

You may file a claim for a deceased owner's property if you are an heir, a trustee, or the personal representative of the estate, meaning the executor or administrator. The state requires documentation proving both that the owner died and that you have the legal right to receive their property. What satisfies that second requirement depends on the size of the estate.

Every claimant signs personally. A power of attorney cannot substitute for the claimant's signature, because California Code of Civil Procedure section 1540(a) requires the claimant to verify the claim. The Controller's legal office makes narrow exceptions when a physician certifies that a medical condition prevents someone from signing.

When several heirs share a property, each one either signs the same claim form or files a separate claim for their share. One sibling cannot collect the whole amount on behalf of the others by default. Shared property is common enough to plan for, since 6.6% of California properties list two owners and another 324,675 list three or more.

Estate-related property is also easier to spot than most people expect. The owner name recorded by the state says "ESTATE OF" on 192,660 records and names a trust on 349,562 more, with a further 17,119 marked deceased or "DECD" outright. Those are only the ones labeled as such. Most property belonging to someone who died is filed under their own plain name.

The small estate affidavit path

If the gross value of the deceased person's California property is $208,850 or less, you can often collect unclaimed property with an affidavit instead of opening probate. That threshold applies to deaths on or after April 1, 2025 under California Probate Code section 13100 (opens in a new tab). Which figure applies depends on when the person died, not on when you file.

Probate Code section 890 adjusts these amounts every three years, and the Judicial Council has confirmed the next change lands on April 1, 2028. Anyone quoting a 2026 or 2027 increase is working from bad information.

The affidavit is a sworn statement identifying you as a successor in interest, and it requires no court filing or filing fee. You must wait 40 days after the death before using it. Our guide to the small estate affidavit covers the form and the qualifying rules in detail.

If the estate includes a home

A separate procedure covers real property. Assembly Bill 2016 raised the limit for a petition to succeed to real property under Probate Code sections 13150 through 13157 to $750,000 for deaths on or after April 1, 2025, and restricted that procedure to the decedent's primary residence in California.

This one is a court petition rather than an affidavit, so it does involve the probate court, but it is far shorter than full administration. It matters here because an estate holding a house can still be too large for the section 13100 affidavit while remaining eligible for this faster path.

When you need letters testamentary

Larger estates require formal probate, and the state will ask for letters testamentary or letters of administration. These are court documents naming you as the person authorized to act for the estate. You get them by petitioning the probate court in the county where the person lived, which is the beginning of the probate process.

If the property is small and probate is not otherwise necessary, opening a case purely to claim it rarely makes sense. Compare the amount against what probate costs before deciding.

What Heirs Actually Find

Insurance money is the largest death-related category. California holds $535.7 million across 188,283 properties coded as Proceeds Due Beneficiaries, which is money an insurer owed to the beneficiary of someone who died and could not deliver. Another 1,604,115 properties worth $384.7 million are individual policy benefits and claims.

Counting every death-related property type together, including policy benefits, beneficiary proceeds, annuity and endowment proceeds and death benefits, California holds 1,992,733 properties worth $1.095 billion. That is money attached to people who have died, waiting on someone to come forward.

Heirs also find ordinary accounts. Checking and savings accounts account for $1.47 billion combined, uncashed cashier's checks another $708.6 million, and shares of stock held under a former owner's name $835.6 million. A relative who bought stock through an employer plan decades ago is a common source.

Beneficiary money is worth a separate look because it never passes through the estate at all. A policy with a named living beneficiary goes straight to that person, which is why beneficiary designations sit outside probate. When the beneficiary cannot be found, that is exactly how the money ends up with the state.

Sorting all 86.9 million properties into plain-English categories shows where the money actually sits. The averages matter more than the totals, because they tell you which results are worth the paperwork.

Retirement accounts are the highest-yield thing to look for. There are only 350,500 of them statewide, but they average $843, and the individual IRA codes run far higher. Traditional IRAs held as mutual funds average $8,023, and matured certificates of deposit average $8,447. Old retirement money is worth searching for by itself.

The opposite end explains why most searches feel like junk. Refunds and credit balances make up 27.7 million properties, roughly a third of everything in the database, and they average $54. Unredeemed gift certificates average $12.66.

Why a result might show $0

A $0 balance does not mean the property is empty. Safe deposit box contents are physical objects such as jewelry, coins, savings bonds and documents, so there is no cash figure attached. California lists 92,334 safe deposit box properties, and almost all of them show no dollar value at all.

Shares work the same way. Of the 1,450,320 properties that report stock, 124,866 show a cash balance of $0 because the state recorded the shares rather than a dollar amount. Do not skip a result because the number next to it looks like nothing.

What Happens to Unclaimed Stock in California

California sells it. Under Code of Civil Procedure section 1563(b) (opens in a new tab), the State Controller must sell escheated securities no sooner than 18 months and no later than 20 months after the reporting due date. An heir who claims later receives the net proceeds of that sale, not the shares and not their value today.

This is the single most expensive thing most heirs never learn. The sale is mandatory and runs on a fixed clock of 18 to 20 months, so stock that escheated in 2012 was sold in 2013 or 2014, and a claim filed today pays that old sale price no matter what the company has done since. There is no provision to undo the sale or to be made whole for the gain. Searching early is worth real money, and it is the one part of this process where waiting has a measurable cost.

The shares themselves are still recorded. California's database lists 1,450,320 properties carrying reported shares, and the largest single block belongs to one company.

Why insurers dominate that list

Four of the top five are life insurers, and they are there for one reason. Between 1999 and 2001 several large mutual insurers converted to shareholder-owned companies, and their policyholders were issued stock automatically as part of the conversion.

Metropolitan Life converted on April 7, 2000 and distributed 493,903,472 shares into a policyholder trust. Principal Financial allocated at least 100 shares to each eligible policyholder on October 26, 2001. Prudential converted the same year. Between MetLife and Prudential alone, roughly 22 million policyholders were affected.

Many of those people never understood that a life insurance policy had turned them into a shareholder. They moved, the dividend checks and proxy statements stopped reaching them, and the shares went dormant. California is now holding 5,245,516 unclaimed MetLife shares from that 2000 distribution. If a relative held a life insurance policy with any of these companies before 2001, that is a specific and highly likely place to find something.

How Much Is Usually There

Most unclaimed property is small. Nearly half of all California properties, 47.6% of them, are worth under $10, and 84.9% are worth under $100. Those small properties together hold only 10.4% of the money. The average across everything is $143.80.

The value is concentrated at the top. Only 293,947 properties, three tenths of 1% of the total, are worth more than $5,000, and those hold 42% of the entire $12.497 billion. Fewer than 6,000 properties exceed $100,000.

What this means in practice is that a search usually turns up a few small items and occasionally turns up something substantial. Claim the small ones anyway when the paperwork is already done, because filing for several properties at once costs no more effort than filing for one.

Where the Money Came From

The state holds all of it. The companies below no longer have the money, they reported and turned it over because California law requires a business to escheat property it cannot return to its owner. Knowing which businesses reported the most is useful for one reason, which is that it tells you where to think about searching.

Sorting by the parent company behind each reporting entity puts banks and insurers at the top.

These figures are floors. Large companies report under dozens of separate entity names, and grouping them is not something the state's database does for you. Bank of America appears under 137 distinct reporting names, JPMorgan Chase under 61, and Wells Fargo under 36. A search for one spelling will not surface property filed under another, which is a good reason to search by your relative's name rather than by the company you think held the account.

Average size varies enormously by source. Property reported by Charles Schwab averages $1,491, while property reported by PayPal averages $62 across more than two million records. A familiar company name next to a result says nothing about how much is there.

Unclaimed Property by California County

Los Angeles County holds by far the most, at $2.78 billion across 18,562,324 properties. Orange County follows at $948.4 million and San Diego County at $731.7 million. The figures below reflect the county of the owner's last known address, not where the money is held.

Read each number as a floor. Counties are assigned by matching the owner's last known city against the state's roster of incorporated cities, and properties listing an unincorporated address or a non-standard city spelling are not assigned to any county. That leaves roughly 16% of California properties uncounted here, and the shortfall falls hardest on rural counties.

For how many estates move through each county's courts every year, see our breakdown of California probate filings by county.

What This Means When the Estate Is in Probate

Unclaimed property belonging to a deceased person is an estate asset, and the personal representative has to account for it. It belongs on the inventory alongside the house and the bank accounts. Executors routinely miss it because nothing in the ordinary probate process prompts anyone to search the state database.

Run the search early. Finding a policy benefit worth $40,000 after the inventory is filed means amending it, and finding it after distribution is worse. A search takes two minutes and costs nothing.

Expect the claim to take time. State law allows the Controller's Office up to 180 days from receipt of a complete claim package to decide. Straightforward cash claims by a living owner can clear in 30 to 60 days, but claims filed by heirs are more complex and generally run the full 180 days. That timeline runs alongside probate, which in California typically takes a year or more.

If you are an heir waiting on an estate to close and you need money before that happens, a probate advance is one option. Catalina Structured Funding is a direct funder, which means we use our own capital and decide in house rather than brokering your file to someone else. The amount we quote is the amount you receive. Call (800) 317-3769 or request a quote online to see what your inheritance would support.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I claim my deceased mother's unclaimed money?

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Yes, if you are her heir, the trustee of her trust, or the personal representative of her estate. You will need a death certificate plus proof of your right to inherit, which is either a small estate affidavit if her California property was worth $208,850 or less at her death or letters testamentary from the probate court for larger estates.

Is there a deadline to claim unclaimed property in California?

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No. The State Controller's Office holds unclaimed property indefinitely and there is no time limit for filing a claim. You can file at any point after the property has been transferred to the state, whether that happened last year or 40 years ago.

Does unclaimed property have to go through probate?

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Not always. If the gross value of the California property falls at or under $208,850 for a death on or after April 1, 2025, you can usually collect with a small estate affidavit and no court involvement. An estate whose main asset is the decedent's primary residence may qualify for a shorter court petition up to $750,000. Larger estates require letters testamentary.

How long does a deceased owner claim take?

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Generally about 180 days. California law allows the Controller's Office up to 180 days from receipt of a complete claim package, and heir claims almost always take longer than the 30 to 60 days a simple owner claim can take, because the documentation proving inheritance rights takes longer to review.

Do I pay taxes on unclaimed property I inherit?

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The State Controller's Office does not withhold taxes from unclaimed property payments and does not issue a Form 1099 for securities paid in cash or for dividends earned on them. Whether you owe anything depends on what the property is and your own situation, so ask a tax advisor.

What happens to unclaimed stock in California?

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The state sells it. Code of Civil Procedure section 1563(b) requires the State Controller to sell escheated securities no sooner than 18 months and no later than 20 months after the reporting due date. You receive the net proceeds of that sale, not the shares and not their present value, which is why searching early matters more with stock than with cash.

What if several siblings are entitled to the same property?

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Each heir signs the same claim form or files a separate claim for their own share. The state will not pay one sibling the full amount on the assumption that they will divide it. Expect this to add time, since the claim cannot finish until every heir's documentation is in.