Stocks and Securities

What This Property Usually Is

A transfer agent reports a holding when mail is returned and dividends go uncashed. Depending on when it was transferred, the State may still hold the shares, or may have sold them and be holding the proceeds. Which of those is true changes what you receive and what it is worth.

Documents You Will Normally Need

• Government-issued photo identification
• Proof of the Social Security number or tax identification number reported
• Certificates, if you hold them — though most modern holdings are book-entry
• Brokerage or transfer agent statements showing the position
• A notarized claim affirmation — required for every securities claim, at any value

What Trips People Up

Dividend arrears are a separate calculation from the shares themselves, and claimants routinely forget to pursue them. So is the question of whether you are owed shares or the cash they were sold for.

Why Securities Are the Most Complicated Category

Cash sits still. Shares do not. Between the day a holding was reported and the day you claim it, the company may have split its stock, been acquired, changed its name, paid dividends, or ceased to exist. The transfer agent’s records, the Controller’s records and your memory of what you owned may all describe the same holding differently.

Every securities claim requires a notarized affirmation, whatever the value. There is no threshold and no exception.

Shares, or the Money They Became

This is the question that decides what you actually receive. The Controller may still hold the shares themselves, or it may have sold them and be holding the proceeds. Which one it is depends on when the property transferred and what the Controller did with it.

If the shares were sold, you receive the sale proceeds — not the shares, and not what they would be worth today. Where a stock rose sharply after the sale, that difference is not recoverable, and it is worth understanding that before you build expectations on a current share price.

What Also Comes Across

• Dividends declared and never cashed, often over many years
• Shares from employee purchase plans at jobs left decades ago
• Holdings from demutualised insurers, which issued shares to policyholders who never knew
• Fractional shares created by splits and reinvestment
• Bond interest and matured principal
• Mutual fund positions from accounts that went quiet

The CUSIP Is the Thing to Note

Every security has a CUSIP — a nine-character identifier that survives name changes and mergers. Where a record shows one, it is the most reliable way to establish exactly what was held, particularly for a company that has since been bought or renamed several times.

What a Securities Claim Needs

• Everything a cash claim needs — identity, Social Security number, address evidence
• A notarized affirmation, always
• Share certificates if you still hold them, though most people do not and they are not required
• Records of the employment or policy that produced the shares, where the connection is not obvious

Expect a Hundred and Eighty Days

Securities claims are worked as complex claims, which means up to the full statutory review period. There is also a transfer agent involved as well as the Controller, and shares that must be sold or reissued add weeks after approval. Six months from filing to money is normal, not a sign anything has gone wrong.

If You Inherited Shares You Did Not Know About

Common, and worth checking. Employee plans and demutualised insurers produced enormous numbers of small holdings that owners forgot and heirs never learned of. If a parent worked somewhere with a share scheme, or held a life policy with a mutual insurer that later listed, it is worth searching their name.