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Home >> Special Situations >> Deceased Individuals
Finding Accounts of the Deceased
I'm not sure I've found all the accounts of my deceased father. How do I go about locating ones I may not know about?
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 First, take a look at the Abandoned Property lists for the state in which your father resided. Check out www.missingmoney.com, which is a website sponsored by most of the states' abandoned property offices, where you can find a search tool and links or contact information for all of the states' abandoned property offices. This is a good place to look if there is any chance your father's accounts sat untouched for more than a couple of years.
The other route to take is to see if there is any hint of other accounts in the records of accounts you do know about. For example, if your father kept a checking account you know about in Bank A and a savings account you don't know about in Bank B, there might be a check payable to Bank B recorded somewhere in the records of the checking account.
Finally, there is old-fashioned legwork, some of which you may be able to do over the telephone. Identify the financial institutions in the town where your father last resided, or lived, within five years before his death. Be prepared with a certified copy of his death certificate and start asking if he may have had accounts in each bank. It will help if you happen to be the official representative of his estate, with a probate court appointment as such, because some bankers will simply not talk with anyone else about a decedent's account.
Your question is one that comes up here time and time again. It's a great idea for anyone with bank accounts, insurance policies, safe deposit boxes, investment accounts, and the like, to have an inventory of those assets in a safe and secure place that a trusted family member or friend knows about, and to keep that inventory updated at least annually or any time there's a change.
Published on BankingQuestions.com 7/27/09
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