Statists don’t think we should own anything. They use any excuse they can to confiscate money and property.
Which is why I keep very little in a bank. I get paid and the money leaves the account. I do not trust banks not to at some point hand over everyone’s dough.
The danger is when the state decides an account has been inactive for six months or less it is inactive and takes it. Then the owner gets a monthly statement saying it was taken by the state and he must spend time and effort to get it back. The state decides that they took it by acident and promise to return it as soon as the legistlature passes the state budget and pay off any pressing bills first before the owner gets his money back. It could be months before the owner gets his money back. This has happen to safety deposit boxes in CA where a woman stored a few items in the box and always paid the box rental fee. CA inspectors came and decided that no one open the box for years and had the bank send a letter to the owner to claim it otherwise. Problem is most banks do not update the deposit box owner address despite the fact we have on line ability to do so on all our accounts (I learned that the hard way after I moved and changed my mailing address on line, all accounts were updated but the update of the desposit box had to be done in person or mailed letter to a separate group in the bank, my rental bill was forwarded from my old address. Went to the bank and found out address updates for boxes cannot be done on line). Result was the bank sent the letter to the woman’s old address despite she banks at the bank. Result was the state took the content of the box and auctioned all of it within 30 days. The woman discoverd the problem when the deposit box rent fee no longer came and upon the death of her husband she went to access the box for documents. Then she was informed of what happen. The state returned her documents and the cash for the family jewelry that was auctioned off at discount.
Great post.
This happened to me.
they tried this gift card theft here too - we sent ‘em packing
Bialosky sounds pretty lazy, expecting other folks to keep up with his money. Perhaps he needs to be a bit more diligent in keeping track of his own assets.
This resulted in a huge lawsuit, which my grandmother lost because the last nieces had squatter's rights and my grandmother had never claimed the property. (Hard to do when you don't know you own it!) It was a crappy little dirt tract, so no big loss as far as property goes, but the whole point of it is that probate is a huge deal. Make sure it's done right.
Uhh, the retailer received the full cash value of the gift card, plus the time value of the money.
I find it difficult to come up with any particular reason a retailer should be able to just pocket these funds. One of the main reasons they're so popular with retailers is that a great many of them are never redeemed, which then becomes 100% profit for the seller.
While I'm not entirely sure it's right for the state to take the funds, the retailer certainly has no legal or moral claim to them.
The amount at stake is some billions of dollars per year in the USA.
This is why all of my cash has been converted to physical silver. I keep some cash for fast access just in case, but 95% of my savings is in physical silver bullion.
