Probate Estates and the Second State File

Two Files, Not One

When people talk about California unclaimed property they almost always mean one file: the accounts that banks, insurers and employers hand to the State after they lose contact with the owner. That file is enormous, roughly fifty million records, and it is what our main search covers.

There is a second file, and it is far less well known. When someone dies and their estate goes through county probate without every share reaching an heir, the residue is remitted to the State Controller. Those estates are published separately, as the Estates of Deceased Persons File, updated on the first business day of April and October.

Our search runs both at once. You do not have to know which is which, or pick between them, because expecting you to would be designing around our database instead of around your question.

What the Estates File Actually Contains

At the time we last rebuilt our copy it held around thirty-seven thousand estates and seventy-four thousand named people, because a single estate can name a dozen heirs or more. Some name twenty-five.

• The decedent’s name, and any alias the court recorded
• Every heir the probate identified, by name
• The county that handled the probate, and the case number
• The amount the State received, and what remains of it today
• Whether the State has since taken permanent title

That last item is the one that decides everything, and it is the part nobody explains.

Most of This File Cannot Be Claimed

An estate that goes unclaimed long enough is permanently escheated: the State stops holding it for an owner and takes title to it outright. After that, no claim will be paid, by you, by us, or by anyone. It is not a deadline you can appeal and it is not a matter of finding the right form.

Rather more than half the estates in the file are in that condition. We show them in search results anyway, clearly marked and struck through, for one reason: “your grandmother’s estate was escheated to the State in 1983” is a real answer to a real question, and a family that has wondered for forty years deserves to be told rather than shown an empty page.

The Fee Rule Is Different Here, and You Should Know Why

Everywhere else on this site we tell you our fee is capped at ten per cent by Code of Civil Procedure §1582. On probated estates, that is not true, and we would rather say so plainly than let you discover it in a contract.

Section 1582 caps fees on property reported under section 1530 — the ordinary stream, where a business hands over a dormant account. An estate that arrives through county probate comes in under the Probate Code instead, and the State Controller states directly that there are no fee restrictions for investigators filing for the owners or heirs of county probated estates.

So the cap that protects you on a dormant bank account does not protect you here. That is the law, not our preference, and it is worth understanding before you speak to anybody about an estate — including us.

Why Estate Claims Are Harder

The State is not asking whether you are related to the decedent. It is asking you to evidence an unbroken chain from them to you, and each link has to be documented:

• The death certificate, and often more than one where the chain passes through a second death
• Proof of your relationship at every step — birth, marriage, adoption or name change
• Court Letters, or a small-estate affidavit where the estate qualifies
• Where other heirs are named on the record, evidence of what became of them

That last one is the one that stalls claims. An estate naming seventeen heirs is not one claim; it is a question about seventeen people, some of whom have since died themselves. It is genuinely difficult work, which is the honest reason a service exists for it at all.

Start by Looking

Search a surname. If an estate carries it, you will see the decedent, the county, the case number, the balance and every matched name, and you will see immediately whether it is open or closed. None of that costs anything and none of it obliges you to us.

Search both files

Check the Source Yourself

Everything above comes from the State Controller. The file itself is a free download and you are welcome to work from it directly:

• Estates of Deceased Persons File — the State’s page, with the spreadsheet
• Investigators — the Controller’s guidance on firms like ours, including the fee rules