The State Controller's Office runs California's unclaimed property programme, and its search page states the two facts that matter most to an owner before anything else: the Controller safeguards this lost or forgotten property for as long as it takes to reunite it with the rightful owners, and there is no deadline for claiming property once it has been transferred to the State Controller's Office and no fee associated with claiming it. The office's explanation of the programme defines unclaimed property as any financial asset left inactive by its owner for a period of time, typically three years, and says plainly that California unclaimed property law does not include real estate. The most common types it lists are bank accounts and safe deposit box contents, stocks, mutual funds, bonds and dividends, uncashed cashier's checks and money orders, certificates of deposit, matured or terminated insurance policies, estates, mineral interests and royalty payments, trust funds and escrow accounts, and utility account deposits. Property is returned to owners in the form of a check from the state.
The searching and claiming now happen on the state's own portal at claimit.ca.gov, which carries the property search, the claim forms, the document upload, the status check and the holder reporting tools in one place, with the Controller's public pages at sco.ca.gov holding the programme information, the fraud alerts and the resources. The Unclaimed Property Division answers at (800) 992-4647 from anywhere in the United States and (916) 323-2827 from outside it. For the local offices that hold other California records, see the California county pages.
- Search: the Controller's property search at claimit.ca.gov by a personal or business name, narrowed by city or ZIP code, or by a property identifier, which returns a single result.
- Dormancy: generally three years without activity on the account or contact with the owner before a holder must report and deliver the property to the state; real estate is never covered.
- Cost: nothing. There is no fee to claim and no deadline once the property has reached the Controller, and an investigator who files for an owner may not charge more than ten percent of the value returned.
- Claim: four steps, search for the property, submit the claim with an electronic signature, send the documentation the claim form lists, and check the status with the claim number.
Written by SearchSystems.net from California's own systems: the State Controller's Office search for unclaimed property page, the Controller's about unclaimed property page, the Controller's report unclaimed property page, the Controller's consumer fraud alerts page, the Controller's unclaimed property resources page, the general questions on the state claim portal, the portal's how to search page, the portal's how to submit a claim page, the portal's how to complete a claim page, the portal's how to track a claim page, the portal's investigator page, each read on October 14, 2026 by the SearchSystems editorial team.
How money reaches the state, and the two notices before it does
California law requires corporations, businesses, associations, financial institutions and insurance companies, which the programme calls holders, to report and deliver property to the State Controller's Office every year when there has been no activity on an account or contact with the owner for a specified period, generally three years. Contact is usually lost, the Controller explains, because the owner forgets the account exists or moves without leaving a forwarding address, and sometimes because the owner has died and the heirs never knew the property was there.
Two notices are supposed to reach the owner before the money leaves private hands. First, the law requires every holder to attempt to contact the owner before reporting, sending a notice to the last known address to say that the property will be transferred to the Controller for safekeeping unless the owner gets in touch to retrieve it. Second, the Controller sends notices of its own to all owners of property that is about to be transferred, going out before the transfer so that the owner still has the chance to collect directly from the holder.
Only when both notices fail does the asset become state held property, and from that point the Controller keeps it indefinitely.
Searching, and the four step claim
The portal breaks the process into four steps: search for property, submit the claim, submit the documentation and check the claim status. Searching takes a name, personal or business, in the first field, with a city or ZIP code added to narrow the results and a property identifier, where one is known, returning a single record; each property that belongs to the searcher is marked with the claim button, and the continue to file claim button starts the claim.
Filing begins with a review of the properties selected, so that only the intended ones go forward, and then the relationship: a person claims as Myself when they are the listed owner or the legal guardian of a minor who is the listed owner, and as Heir when they are an heir, trustee, executor or estate administrator for the listed owner. The claimant then enters their details, choosing the Individual claim type where the property is listed in their own name or a deceased person's name and the Business claim type where it belongs to a business they own or represent, and giving the current mailing address, because that is where the check will be sent; a further screen may ask the claimant to confirm the address so that the check goes somewhere valid.
An electronic signature and the submit button create the claim and generate a claim number.
The documents, and where they go
Many claims require documentation, and the requirements differ from claim to claim: the Controller emails the claimant and lists the items needed on the claim form attachment, so the email is the authority on what to send. Documents can be uploaded through the portal's secure link, which the Controller says is the faster route, or mailed to the State Controller's Office, Unclaimed Property Division, P.O. Box 942850, Sacramento, CA 94250-9873.
After that the claim number, which appears on the claim form and in the email sent at submission, is entered on the portal's status page at any time to see the most recent status.
Heir finders, and the ten percent cap
Investigators, sometimes called asset locators or heir finders, are people or companies that offer to search for unclaimed property and file claims for owners and heirs, and California regulates them in the owner's favour. It is against the law for an investigator to charge a fee greater than ten percent of the value of the property returned to the owner, the one exception being investigators filing for owners or heirs of county probated estates, where there are no fee restrictions.
The Controller's own position is simply stated on the same page: searching and claiming property through the State Controller's Office website is always free. For those who do this work the office publishes an investigator handbook, instructions on filing an investigator claim, the estates of deceased persons file, standard investigator agreements for ordinary claims and for estates, notices to investigators and an email subscription for changes to the forms, publications and laws that affect them.
The fraud alerts
The consumer fraud alerts describe three things the office has seen. Members of the public have reported generic postcards urging them to call a toll free number about an unclaimed property notification; the Controller is not connected with those mailings and cautions against calling a number from an unknown source. Others have received official looking emails or letters telling them to contact a private attorney or pay upfront fees for help recovering lost property for themselves or a relative; the office answers that an owner has the right to obtain unclaimed property without fees or lawyers by working directly with its staff.
And it is a violation of California law for a person or company to identify themselves falsely as representing a government official, so a suspicious solicitation from a non governmental source should not be answered with personal information but forwarded to the office at CSUResearch@sco.ca.gov for its legal team.
The holder reporting calendar
Businesses have their own half of the system, set out on the Controller's reporting page. Holders of unclaimed property include business associations, banking and financial organisations, life insurance corporations and other businesses and entities holding property belonging to another person, and each must review its records every year to determine whether it holds tangible or intangible property that has stayed unclaimed through the required dormancy period, at which point the property becomes reportable.
The calendar runs in two tracks. A life insurance company files its notice report before May 1, the Controller sends owner notices in mid October, and the remit report is due between December 1 and 15. Every other business files its notice report before November 1, the Controller sends owner notices in mid April, and the remit report is due between June 1 and 15. An extension request must be made no later than thirty days before the report is due.
The office also runs a voluntary compliance programme, publishes reporting forms, notices, newsletters, training and tutorials, and keeps a separate holder contact line.
Where else to look
The Controller's resources page points to the places California property can hide outside its own system: the California State Teachers' Retirement System for unclaimed member property, the Internal Revenue Service for unclaimed federal tax refunds owed to people who never filed a return, the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators for searches in all fifty states, the United States Treasury for lost or forgotten federal savings bonds, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development for undelivered or unclaimed mortgage insurance refunds.
The office separately publishes downloadable property records and handles unclaimed criminal restitution.
Reading a California result
A record in the Controller's database is a financial asset a holder gave up after roughly three years of silence, listed under the owner's name as the holder reported it, which is why a misspelled name, a maiden name or an old business name is worth searching too; a property identifier returns exactly one record, and no entry ever concerns real estate. Nothing on the list expires, so an old account is as claimable as a new one, and no fee is ever owed to the state.
The Unclaimed Property Division in Sacramento holds the money, the claim number tracks the paperwork, and the holder named in the record is the business the asset came from, which is also the place to collect it if the Controller's pre transfer notice reaches the owner in time.
Questions about unclaimed property in California
Related California records
California's other public records guides on this site are the California background check guide for the state criminal history process, the California court records guide for the trial court portals, the California arrest records guide for what a booking makes public, and the California county pages for every county office.