BALTIMORE — Money could be sitting in the state's bank with your name on it. Maryland is holding onto unclaimed property valued at $2.6 billion, and it's estimated 1 in 7 people have unclaimed property. It's easy to check if you're one of them, but it's not as easy to claim.
WMAR-2 News Mallory Sofastaii has learned there’s a significant backlog causing delays in the claims process, with wait times stretching six months or longer. The Maryland Comptroller’s Office is working to change that.
Property becomes unclaimed when it's dormant for three years. It’s usually bank accounts, insurance benefits, refunds, and rebates.
“It could be the contents of a safe deposit box,” explained Maryland Comptroller Brooke Lierman.
And at one point, this included items of no monetary value.
“We had a whole bunch of hair, like baby hair that people had in safe deposit boxes from, you know, decades ago. So yes, now we don't have to hold it anymore,” Lierman added.
However, the Maryland Office of the Comptroller is mandated to hold the monetary value of unclaimed property indefinitely until the rightful owners become aware and file a claim.
Karen Eldridge became aware of her unclaimed property last summer. “I was shocked to find my name came up,” said Eldridge.
All she needed to do was enter her name on the state’s website and submit a claim with documentation proving ownership. She completed this process in October.
“I called back in December, and then again, a different person, but indicated that they're working in the month of July now. I'm like, okay, so how long is this process? How lengthy is it?” Eldridge wondered.
She doesn’t know the exact amount, she was told between $100 and $200, and she's tired of checking on it every month.
“I decided to call and let you know about it and see if you can look into the matter,” Eldridge told WMAR-2 News Mallory Sofastaii.
Sofastaii asked the Comptroller's Office and learned the average wait is 24 weeks.
“Yeah, it's too long. It's too long. So, one of the things that we did was we asked the Governor and the General Assembly for additional people,” Comptroller Lierman responded.
They now have six more staff members, but they're still playing catch up as they work to update their decades-old system.
“Right now, my staff in the unclaimed property division are on green screens. They have old fashioned, you know, COBOL based processing that they're doing, which is, you know, sort of crazy to even think about in this day and age. So, this new system will be seamless. It will also provide an easier way to verify who you are, which is important. It will help us make sure that we can detect fraud more easily,” said Lierman.
They’ve also proposed new legislation permitting the Comptroller’s Office to automatically send money to individuals with unclaimed property under $5,000.
“We'd love to be able to be more proactive to get people their money, but we can't do that if the law stays as it is,” said Lierman.
Forty other states have already adopted the KAPS unclaimed property system by Kelmar Associates. Comptroller Lierman couldn't say why Maryland fell behind, but that she started working on this project when she took office two years ago.
Sofastaii also asked Lierman if the state has an incentive to hold onto this money with $100 million in unclaimed property going into the general fund each year.
“I don't believe that because at the end of the day, this money belongs to Marylanders. Every claim can be accounted for, and so, if every single Marylander filed their claim next year for this money, we would have an obligation as a state to pay that money, and we would do it,” said Lierman.
To search your name in the state’s unclaimed property database, click here. If your name doesn’t appear, you may still have unclaimed property. Currently, the system doesn't show accounts valued at $100 or less. The state is working to fix that when they roll out their new system before the end of the year.
In the meantime, you can call the Comptroller's Office or look for a notice in the mail. They send them out quarterly. And the agency publishes the names of individuals with an unclaimed property advertisement in several local newspapers, including the Washington Post, annually. These advertisements run for several weeks.
In Fiscal Year 2024, the state paid out 27,000 claims returning over $60 million to Marylanders. And in the last six months, the Comptroller’s Office has already filled 32,000 claims.
According to the Comptroller’s Office, as of February 18, the Unclaimed Property Division has over 24,000 claims in various processing stages. The Division is working expeditiously to reduce the number of outstanding claims and to reduce the turnaround time for Marylanders.