The Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts runs the state's unclaimed property program, and its program page opens with a wide definition: unclaimed property can be any financial asset or safe deposit box contents that has been abandoned by the property owner for one or more years. The examples it gives are abandoned bank accounts, uncashed checks, overpayments, payroll and vendor checks, unredeemed gift cards, insurance proceeds, dividends and mineral interests. Businesses and government entities doing business with Texans are holders, and holders are required by statute to file an annual report with the Comptroller's office, filed online, with a negative report for those who have nothing to send. Individuals and businesses search for their property at ClaimItTexas.gov, which has been the search since October 16, 2017, when the Comptroller retired the old search at its own site.
The claim portal and the program pages divide the work cleanly. The Comptroller's own site carries the holder material, the reporting instructions guide, the property type codes and abandonment periods, the Texas Property Code, the reporting videos for oil and gas, general business, financial institution and manual online reporting, and the email lists for reporting updates, legislative changes and webinars. ClaimItTexas.gov carries the property search, the claim, the document upload, the status check, the holder remittance and negative reports, the TEXNET payments, the reporting deadlines, the voluntary disclosure agreements, the forms and the Spanish language help. The Unclaimed Property Division answers at (800) 321-2274 and unclaimed.property@cpa.texas.gov. For other Texas records by place, see the Texas county pages.
- Search: at ClaimItTexas.gov by last or business name with a first name where it applies, narrowed by city when the list is long, or by the property identifier printed on a mailed owner notice.
- Abandonment: one year for payroll and utility deposits, three for bank accounts, checks, securities and most other types, five for safe deposit boxes and fifteen for traveler's checks, with no statute of limitations once the state holds it.
- Holder calendar: owner notices warning that the property must go to the Comptroller by July 1 if unclaimed, the annual report filed online, a negative report when there is nothing to report, and report records kept for at least ten years.
- Claim and finders: four steps tracked by Claim ID, free at every stage; a finder must be licensed by the Department of Public Safety and may charge no more than 10 percent including expenses.
Written by SearchSystems.net from Texas's own systems: the Texas Comptroller unclaimed property program page, the Comptroller's how to file page for holders, the Comptroller's unclaimed property annual notification for state agencies, the ClaimItTexas how to search page, the ClaimItTexas how to submit a claim page, the Comptroller's former unclaimed property search notice, the ClaimItTexas unclaimed property questions page, the ClaimItTexas reporting guidelines and abandonment periods page, the ClaimItTexas reporting deadlines page, the Comptroller's unclaimed property reporting instructions, publication 96-478, each read on October 14, 2026 by the SearchSystems editorial team.
The abandonment periods, type by type
Texas has required institutions, businesses and government entities to report abandoned personal property since 1963, under Title 6 of the Property Code, whose chapters 72 to 77 govern reporting, delivery and claims, with chapter 76 reserved for property held by counties, cities, school districts and junior colleges and chapter 77 for unclaimed crime victims' restitution held by probation departments. The period before property is abandoned runs from one to fifteen years and is set by property type, and the Comptroller's reporting instructions publish the common ones in a table.
One year covers payroll, utility deposits, demutualization proceeds and wages loaded onto stored value cards. Three years covers uncashed dividend and cashier's checks, stocks, bonds and mutual fund accounts, gift cards, bank accounts and matured certificates of deposit, insurance proceeds, mineral interests and royalty payments, court deposits, trust funds and escrow accounts, money orders and safekeeping or other tangible property.
Safe deposit box contents take five years, and traveler's checks fifteen. The period is counted from the last contact between the holder and the owner, and the questions page warns that an autodraft or an interest posting does not count as contact, so an account needs a manual transaction at least once a year to stay out of the program. On the other side of the handover there is no clock at all: the Comptroller states that there is no statute of limitations for unclaimed property, that funds reported remain with the state indefinitely until returned to the rightful owner, and that real estate and vehicles are never part of it.
Filing the claim, and the finders you do not need
The portal takes a last or business name, with a first name where one applies, and narrows a long list by city; anyone who received an owner notice in the mail can type the property identifier from it into its own field and go straight to that record. Each property that belongs to the searcher is added with the claim button, the selection is reviewed so that nothing is claimed by mistake, and the claim form then takes the claimant's current mailing address, where the funds will be posted, an email address, which the Comptroller recommends because corresponding by email speeds the claim, and the relationship to the owner for each property, which decides what the office will ask for next.
An address verification screen may follow, the claim is submitted, and the portal issues a Claim ID that identifies the file and opens the status check from the home page; documents go through the portal's upload page. The office charges nothing for any of it, and it will run a search and help start a claim for anyone who contacts it directly. That matters because of the people who write offering to do it for a share: under Texas law heir finders and asset recovery companies must be licensed by the Department of Public Safety's Private Security Bureau, and their fees cannot be more than 10 percent of the value of the property recovered, including all expenses. Nobody has to sign a contract with a private company to claim their own money.
What a holder has to do
The Comptroller's how to file page walks a business through the same sequence in the other direction. A holder closing its books and finding uncashed checks or other financial assets owed to a Texas vendor, client, customer or employee first determines whether the property is abandoned, which means working out whether there has been communication or other business dealings with the owner during the abandonment period, a period that varies by property type and is published in the Comptroller's property type codes and abandonment periods table.
The holder then sends notices to the property owners, and the page is specific about what the notice says: that the holder is holding the property, and that the holder is required to deliver the property to the Comptroller's office by July 1 if the owner does not claim it. Finally the holder submits the owner's money or financial assets together with the owner information in a report to the office, following the reporting instructions guide, and retains the records of that report for at least ten years.
Property is not reported until it has reached the end of its abandonment period, and a holder with nothing to report this year files a negative report through the online manual reporting function. The portal's reporting guidelines put dates on the sequence: the report year runs from March 2 to March 1, holders review their records for property without owner contact as of March 1, due diligence letters go out by May 1, and the report and payment are due by July 1, filed electronically in the NAUPA2 format with payment by check, wire or ACH, since reports on discs or other physical media are not accepted.
The deadlines page shows the arithmetic for 2026, with one year property whose last contact fell between March 2, 2024 and March 1, 2025, three year property from the same window two years earlier, and fifteen year property from 2010 to 2011 all due on July 1, 2026, and it records that House Bill 1514 moved life insurance proceeds onto the same July 1 date as everything else. The program page lists the training the office provides for this, with reporting instruction videos for oil and gas, general business, financial institutions and manual online reporting, and subscriptions for reporting updates, legislative changes and webinars.
Even the state has to look
Unclaimed property turned over to Texas sometimes belongs to the state's own agencies and universities, and the Comptroller's annual notification tells them what happens if they ignore it: under Property Code section 74.601(g), if an agency or institution does not claim its property after the annual notification, the office deposits the money into unappropriated general revenue. Agencies and institutions are urged to contact the Unclaimed Property Division or search the portal regularly, to give the contact details of their financial representative, and to act before the sweep date the notice sets.
An agency operating a general revenue dedicated account or a special fund outside general revenue may still be able to claim property held by the office, if it supplies documentation establishing that the original source of the funds was that account or fund, in which case the property may be returned to the original fund and may be subject to future appropriation; the burden of establishing the original source lies on the claiming entity.
The notice also gives search advice that works for anyone, not just agencies: the database reflects how the money was reported rather than any official name, so a searcher should try previous names, such as Texas Employment Commission for the Texas Workforce Commission, common acronyms such as Texas DPS or UT Austin, and common unofficial names such as Highway Department for the Texas Department of Transportation.
Reading a Texas result
A record in the Texas database is an asset a holder gave up after the abandonment period for that property type, filed under the name and spelling the holder used, which is why name variations, former names and acronyms are worth trying; a property identifier from a mailed notice goes straight to one record. The holder named in the record is the business that reported the money, the Claim ID follows the claim once filed, and the Unclaimed Property Division at (800) 321-2274 and unclaimed.property@cpa.texas.gov handles the questions the portal does not answer.
Nothing in the program covers real property, and nothing is charged by the state for making a claim.
Questions about unclaimed property in Texas
Related Texas records
Texas's other public records guides on this site are the Texas background check guide for the state criminal history search, the Texas court records guide for the district and county clerks, the Texas arrest records guide for what a booking makes public, and the Texas county pages for every county office.