How does this happen?

Unfortunately, it is believed that 70% of Americans do not have a Will or Trust.  When an individual dies without a Will, the deceased is considered to have died “intestate” and assets are distributed to the deceased’s heirs under applicable State law.

Many individuals fail or forget to notify or update their records when they marry, divorce, or move, and those individuals who do have Wills, fail to update them or leave a financial roadmap for their heirs.   Even when Probate proceedings are conducted and the legal heirs determined, assets often go undiscovered or are unknown during the Probate process.

It is also estimated that between one-quarter and one-third of all life insurance policies – amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars annually - go unpaid when the insured dies.

Why?  Because it is generally up to the family to notify the insurance company of the death and many are unaware of the policy’s existence.  The same is true for Stock accounts, Bonds, IRS refunds and other financial assets.

There are also billions of dollars belonging to deceased insurance policy holders that resulted from the “demutualization” of mutual insurance companies that took place from 1999 thru 2001 such as John Hancock, Prudential, MetLife and several others. The policy owners of those companies were issued stock as a result and sent to the address of record. Many of those addresses were outdated and some of the policy owners had died. Rather than search for the beneficiaries the holders of the shares liquidated them (thus ending dividend re-investment or payment of dividends) and deposited the resulting cash into non-interest bearing accounts.