What does it saying in the Constitution that the government can Escheating your money.

[TheVictortheviking]

True, but if you move and don't tell people your new address then you can hardly complain that you don't get your mail, can you?

I am not a fan the paternalistic state that regulates everything to eliminate the personal responsibility of individuals. I think people ought to have the responsibility to do some basic thing for themselves. It's not too much to ask people to keep their addresses current with the institutions and agencies they do business with. It's not too much to ask people to read their mail and take the steps indicated to protect themselves. God help us if people cannot do even these simple things without some kind of government regulation or program to protect us from our own stupidity or laziness.

So people are not entitled to the money they earn? They have to constantly have their hand on some bureaucratic version of a dead man's switch to keep the state from taking it at a moment notice? The government is the one introducing into your bank account. What business do they have to take your money because you did not get some letter on time? They are not owed this money, this is just outright thief by some greedy corrupt politicians and government bureaucrats. The only thing they have accomplished is people no longer trusting the banks and financial institutions

 

[TheVictortheviking]

Incidentally, Victor's in Florida, not Nevada. He just pulled Nevada and stories he's heard about things happening there out of the air. It sounds like he's one of those folks who believe that if they choose, they can ignore everything and then rant and rave enough to fix the consequences of their neglect.

It is miraculous how the postal service does work, because people tend to get the notices that say they are being prosecuted, or their money is being taken, but they never ever got the first fifteen things that were done to inform them of actions they needed to take before this happened and that would've stopped this from happening.

People who are anti-big government have never been in a place where there was no government control of much of anything. A confederacy doesn't work because it's too small and local. Uncle Jim down at the courthouse has far too much control over who gets what. And when profit meets principle, on a small scale, you are robbed if the person with control feels like doing it. The federal standards are about the only thing that keeps states, or at least the states in my good old Southeast, like Florida from robbing you blinder than a bat and giving you less and less and less freedom and control, not to mention protection from crookedness.

In a period of 1 month, your previous post office lost 50% of the packages I ordered from both Amazon/Ebay. Many of the tracking number showing they entered the post office then disappeared. While waiting in line, the person in front of me was told they had given his $1,000 Camera to the wrong address. Secondly, I was on vacation and when I return there was 1 single letter stating that the deadline had already passed. The government is not suppose to do anything that individual people could not do if you live in a society with no or little government. People allocate those powers to the government to act on their behalf. In such a society, no person would ever be permitted to just take over your bank account like that.

How about the fact that taxes are being paid on the account and mail is being received not return to sender. We live in a society where everyone is constantly being considered to be dead unless you immediately contest it via the post office?

This is the type of thing they do in the banana republic not America. If your money vanished because you went on vacation, I doubt you would feel the same way.

 

[TheVictortheviking]

Vic, the Federal Constitution is not a catch all arbiter of legal issues. Unless a Federal Constitutional question is presented, State law controls. Your state Due Course of Law Process can be argued, yes, but I would bet there is Case law on this subject already, whether challenging DP, or another legal premise. Federal Courts can rarely intervene in sole state law decisions matters.

They did when AZ passed a law against illegal aliens that just mirrored the federal law.
They did when states passed laws banning gay marriage( don't see that in the constitution)
They did when state passed laws against Obamacare.
They did when state passed Voter ID requirements.
They did on Timbs v. Indiana when the state seize his LandRover car and the state argued in court that they had the right to seize your car for any offense even as driving 5 mph over the speed limit.
( can you imaging the police stealing your car over driving 5 miles over the limit? )
I have seen federal court intervene in state decision all the time.
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

You need due process to take the money in the first place not take the money and make you jump though hopes to get your own money back.

 

[TheVictortheviking]

In my case it was a couple of insurance premiums that had been returned to me when I changed insurance companies. I didn't realize I'd never cashed the checks and was quite surprised to find my name on the State Lost Money list. I filled out a couple of forms and the state sent me a check. It was very easy. You might try it, OP.

I have a lot of " set it and forget it " type investment, long term CD that literally require no action or there is nothing to do in the account.

Taxes on paid, mail is received, the bank is called for other issues. There is no reason for the state to come in and take money that I know its there from a place that is suppose to be safe. I might be better off digging a hole in some random field and putting my money in a box there rather then using a financial institution that is on the warpath to grab money that does not belong to them.

You want to talk about something that discriminate against seniors citizens who don't even use a computer?

 

[Taxing Matters]

Where in the constitution does it say the state can seize your money without a warrant, judgement against you from a living person?

The way the federal constitution works is that it does not tell the states what they may do. It instead tells them what they cannot do. So the states may do anything unless the constitution prohibits it. There is no express prohibition in the constitution of escheatment laws. So you'd have to get the federal courts to say that these laws violate some other more general rule in the constitution that prohibits the state from doing something in order to get these laws held unconstitutional.

Since you are so opposed to the Florida law on this, contact your state legislator to either eliminate the escheatment law altogether or at least put in better protection against taking accounts that are truly still active.

 

[TheVictortheviking]

The government doesn't. But then I never heard an argument for the escheat statutes as a way to protect individuals from being preyed upon by investment firms and banks either. I certainly would say that the escheat statutes I've looked at use too short a time period and that some simplification of process would be worthwhile. Moreover, I would have the state use the information it has to actively reach to the account holders to let them know when it has received property under the escheat statute. I'm not saying these laws are perfect. But I am saying that with a notice requirement people shouldn't really ever run into an escheat problem. If they do the simple steps of keeping addresses current, reading their mail, and then contacting their financial institution they'd be fine. And I don't think that's too much to ask for people to do.

This problem did not exist until recently when they changed the rules to steal more money.

The state government is the one doing the praying not the financial institution. Everything you mentioned could be fixed if you did not allow the financial institution to keep money they would normally considered as dormant.

They changed the rules for that everything was considered as dormant even if there were obvious sign that the account was not . If you are paying taxes on the account yet the state still considered you dead takes your money? This is a racket pure and simple not any type of protection.

This are people life savings in a bank account and the state has no claim to them. They have consultant who run seminars who come up with new ways to steal money like this. This was never a problem until recently. They have gone too far.

 

[TheVictortheviking]

The way the federal constitution works is that it does not tell the states what they may do. It instead tells them what they cannot do. So the states may do anything unless the constitution prohibits it. There is no express prohibition in the constitution of escheatment laws. So you'd have to get the federal courts to say that these laws violate some other more general rule in the constitution that prohibits the state from doing something in order to get these laws held unconstitutional.

Since you are so opposed to the Florida law on this, contact your state legislator to either eliminate the escheatment law altogether or at least put in better protection against taking accounts that are truly still active.

escheatment laws only apply to the dead under the theory that they no longer have any right to it.

The constitution does say the government can't seizure of property. Due process is needed to take the money in the first place.

Citizen bank account are not an open buffet for a greedy state bureaucrat.

If you are claiming escheatment laws, then you are making the claim without evidence that a person is dead. Yet this dead person is somehow still paying taxes and receiving mail on the account.

Where does the constitution prohibit a state from passing a gay marriage ban? Where does it say a state can't have a voter ID requirement?

Judges will often make up their own laws by finding things in the constitution that don't exist.

I will contact the Florida Governor's office and inquire about this. I don't know how any logical person could think this is ok other than it has never happen to them so they don't know how bad this is.

Funny side story, Florida use to have car inspections like other states and one day the governor himself went to do it for his own car. He got so pissed off at waiting in line seeing all the wasted time, car sitting there idling, polluting, etc.. That he scrapped the entire car inspection requirement after experiencing how horrible the process was.

Maybe if the state tried to escheat his money while he was campaigning or busy acting as governor, he might understand what a horrible thing this is. To be fair, the current governor is not the one who put this system in place, it was done way before his time.

 

[Taxing Matters]

You have to get the state to change the statutes. The U.S. Supreme Court has long held that state escheatment laws do not violate the Constitution. The Court summarized its decisions on escheatment in a case from nearly 70 years ago as follows:

Anderson National Bank v. Luckett, supra, in substance, held that the Constitution of the United States does not prohibit a State from escheating deposits in a national bank located and actively doing business therein, abandoned by their owners or belonging to missing persons. The State, after a reasonable lapse of time may lawfully administer such assets, holding them for the benefit of the disappeared claimant or the missing owner for a period and providing for eventual escheat. This it may do through appointment of a personal representative, or a public administrator, or by utilizing its own public officials.​

​

Roth v. Delano, 338 U.S. 226, 230, 70 S. Ct. 22, 24, 94 L. Ed. 13 (1949).

In light of that case law, I'm not seeing a court attack on the statute as a very promising way to address your complaints. The legislature is where you have to go to fix it.

 

[LdiJ]

OK, but here is the thing.

The address of the owner is still VALID! The owner is receiving mail on the account. Also, the owner is paying taxes from the money earned in the account. That is activity. There is no reason to suspect the person is dead. These rules if you look them up dead with the state taking money from a dead person. They are taking money for a person who no longer exist and it dates back to England. These states have no reason to believe that someone is dead but find way to steal your bank account anyway under some twisted logic.

You are really a bit off the wall on this. I really don't think that you understand what the whole thing is about. Nobody is stealing anyone's money. If you spent half of the energy that you have spent on this forum complaining about the state stealing your money, on getting your money back, you would already have it back.

 

[cbg]

LdiJ is, if you'll pardon the expression, right on the money. Escheated money is easily refunded, in full, with very little effort on your part. Sounds as if you'd rather rant than spend the short time it would take to reclaim it.

 

[RJR]

They did when AZ passed a law against illegal aliens that just mirrored the federal law.
They did when states passed laws banning gay marriage( don't see that in the constitution)
They did when state passed laws against Obamacare.
They did when state passed Voter ID requirements.
They did on Timbs v. Indiana when the state seize his LandRover car and the state argued in court that they had the right to seize your car for any offense even as driving 5 mph over the speed limit.
( can you imaging the police stealing your car over driving 5 miles over the limit? )

I have seen federal court intervene in state decision all the time.

The decisions here were argued under a Federal Question, that is not intervening in a State matter based entirely on state law. For example the same sex marriage argument was claimed to have violated the DP Clause of the 14th AM, not that is violated any state law or state Constitutional AM.

 

[HighwayMan]

I think the Viking really needs to go bloviate somewhere else. This is getting a bit silly.