Chase is refusing to honor a cashiers check for $19.700.22, 82-year-old widow Willie Floyd’s life savings. Willie stored the check, originally drawn by her late-husband in 1985, in a $10 per year safe deposit box at the local bank. When she tried to shift the funds into a regular savings account last year, she was told that the check expired after five years, and that her life savings now belonged to the state.
She hired a lawyer, Tarena Washington Franklin, who said she was directed to bank officials in Louisiana, who told her that the money had been given to the State of Wisconsin as unclaimed.
“I checked with the state, and it was not there,” Franklin said. “That money has to be somewhere, and we couldn’t get any answer from them. We filed a lawsuit to get their attention.”
Franklin noted that the check does not have an expiration date.
“What they’re doing, it’s unjust,” Franklin said of bank officials. “It will clearly be unjust enrichment for the bank if they are allowed to keep the money.”
Joshua Stubbins, a local lawyer representing the bank, filed a written response to Franklin’s lawsuit. He said a cashier’s check that is uncashed after five years is presumed to be “abandoned” under state law. He added that the bank “did not willfully or negligently commit a wrongful, illegal or inappropriate act,” and that the case should be dismissed.
Willie could have safeguarded her savings—and earned interest—by keeping her money in an FDIC-insured savings account. She claims to have learned a different lesson: “I didn’t even cook dinner last night,” she said recently. “I should have just buried that money in the backyard.”
Woman sues bank in hopes of recovering life savings [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel]
(Photo: Benny Sieu)
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@masonreloaded: I know, that comment was for Consumerist not the lady in the story.
@fesslove: Ah, OK.
Okay, I feel bad for this lady because the money is hers, but whether Chase or the state has the money seems undetermined to me. Most likely though, the state has her money and probably doesn’t want to give it back.
But if there is any lesson from this story, it’s to help older family members manage their money.
I wouldn’t be surprised if she had this check because she grew up in the depression and had a mistrust of keeping the money in a bank account. It’s a big reason why my grandmother would put any extra money she had into savings bonds rather than the bank, at least those won’t vanish, unless you lose the bond, and even then, they can be traced.
@sacrabos:
A lot of banks wont let you keep cash/coins in a safe deposit box. And when it comes time to open it & inspect the contents of an overdue account…. there is usually a government rep present to note any amount of cash that may be in there & determine if it is a “fishy” enough amount to investigate if it is ill-gotten gains. Safe deposit boxes arent the end-all-beat-all they are supossedly cracked up to be. I’d keep only personal documents in a safe deposit box… not anything valuable.
@DeeJayQueue:
@Falconfire:
@pinkpuppet:
Before he passed away a few years ago, my grandfather always used to have cash stashed various places around his house. He got over his distrust of banks well enough that he eventually invested some money (my father/his son-in-law is a financial consultant, which must’ve mitigated the distrust), but even so when you opened a drawer or a cabinet you sometimes found an envelope of money.
@fesslove: Yeah, having worked with the Division of Unclaimed Funds for Ohio, the check was indeed considered abandoned.
The big however is, what happened to that money? Surely the bank has a record of sending that money to their state’s version of Unclaimed Funds, and surely Mrs. Floyd can show that she has legitimate claim to the money because she holds the original document, which should mean a wait of no more than four weeks to get her money back. That was the time given to applicants to get their money (although it only took one week for my measly 50 bucks that I found I was owed).
So they should be able to very quickly point her to what she needs to do to claim it. Unless they didn’t file with the state and hand the funds over. There have been some definite shenanigans that various financial institutions have used to try and keep that kind of money (and keeping the rightful owners from collecting!)
At lunch I went to the grocery store to pick up a couple of things, the line of people waiting at the customer service desk to cash their checks +/or pay bills in cash +/or use the Western Union service was about 30 people long.
My point is, a LOT of people are bank-o-phobic; old, young, white, black, brown, whoever that is kinda just getting by.
@forgottenpassword: “A lot of banks wont let you keep cash/coins in a safe deposit box. And when it comes time to open it & inspect the contents of an overdue account….”
Having never owned a safe deposit box, I believe you may put anything you want into them. There is nobody there that is supposed to be seeing what you put in and take out of a safe deposit box. That’s part of what you are getting.
And the only time I’m aware of that they open up a deposit box is — tada — after five years of non-payment of rent, it’s considered abandoned and the state collects the contents for their unclaimed funds division.
It used to be that (in Ohio at least) they would keep the valuable items intact, but that has changed over the years, and they now sell the items (coins, jewelry, stock certificates) for money pretty much immediately. You also used to get interest, but they’ve stopped paying that last time I looked.
Besides not trusting a bank to keep her money, she was PAYING to keep money in a box. Wouldn’t it have been just as safe in a box in her possesssion or on her property if she has property?
I keep my money at the bank only because none of it is mine anyway, so why bother going to the trouble of handling it when I won’t get to keep it? It makes it easier to make the bank send out checks I don’t have to buy for all my bills.
@synergy: article says they were worried about a fire at their home, more likely to happen than at a bank.
@Bryan Price:
Correct, but most banks have policies as to what is allowed in a safe deposit box. Sure… you could keep anthrax or dynomite in one if you so wanted as they dont know what you’ve put in there.
FOrgot to mention that when they open one up…. they at least attempt to find the rightfull owner of the property, but if you have $500,000 in cash in there…. the IRS is going to want to know of it is legitimately earned/taxed. I THINK the no cash rule about safe deposit boxes is because some people use them to hide money they earned illegally. My local bank says that you cant keep valuable coins in one either… i have no idea why though.
Note: IF you have a safe deposit box… ALWAYS ALWAYS have info in it as to whom the stuff belongs to & next of kin info etc. etc….. unless you are a drug dealer keeping gobs of illegally earned cash in it…. hate to bring the wrath of the IRS down upon your innocent relatives.
I worry about the validity of checks that I’ve been carrying around in my wallet for a few months. Why would anyone think that a 22 year old check would still be valid? It’s also pretty much common sense that 19k will earn interest, and there are other options for cash than a bank if she doesn’t trust them; gold, stock broker, life insurance company, even a local credit union is an alternative.
It’s a sad story, but I can’t say that I’m particularly sympathetic.
I worked for Chase and a number of its predecessor institutions for about 5 years (no longer). I can tell you the following: cashier’s checks are generally not drawn off of bank-owned account. When a check is made, the money is sent to a third party who then guarantees payment on the item. The third party will keep records on unpaid checks for some time. However, if a check is unpaid in the time it takes for things to be eschated according to the laws of the state in which the check was issued, it will be handed over to that state’s treasury department.
In any case, the money left Chase, or whatever prior bank it was, when the cashier’s check was drawn all those years ago. Asking Chase to be accountable for a cashier’s check they produced in good faith more than 20 years ago is beyond ridiculous. The attorney who agreed to take on this case would have done much better to help this woman trace the funds through each step than this idiotic public crusade. Banks generally keep records for about seven years, but the companies that the banks hire to process their cashier’s checks may have more. I feel bad for this person, but as many here have pointed out, her deceased husband really screwed her over on this one, on more than one account.
The real question is, what the hell did the state do with the money? If its turned over to the state as unclaimed property, then they’re on the hook for it. Instead of suing Chase, which will probably go nowhere and just foster some ill-will, she should be getting their legal department to hunt down the unclaimed property transaction and submit that info to the state so she can get her money. Bam! Problem solved. Its probably an issue of the state hasn’t transferred those older records from whatever medium they were using at the time to the new(er) database and the clerk at the unclaimed property office probably just gave up when it didn’t come up on her computer. So instead of getting someone further up the food chain involved she goes and gets lawyered up.
I’m sure is what happened is this lawyer caught wind of the story somehow and saw a chance to score a bunch of $$$ from a settlement, probably claiming mental distress or some BS like that. I can understand a person of that age not wanting to have to deal with all the extra legwork and hiring a lawyer (hell, a paralegal could take care of this) or enlisting the help of a relative to get the information everyone needs. But this lawsuit idiocy has just got to stop.
@punkrawka:
Well, according to her lawyer, at least, the money didn’t go to the state. So that would mean Chase would be (completely in keeping with their policies of late) lying to her. So yeah, I’m on her side.
I feel for the lady but I understand the bank’s actions. It was a Cashier’s check. They wouldn’t necessarily have had contact information on her with it as they would have a regular check.
Moral of the story, get cash and put it in a private vault.
I have a box at a private vault that I keep all kinds of valuables and documents in. As long as the bill is paid the vault is happy. When I die, the only people that have access to the box is people I have designated on the entry card. If I had a box at a bank and died, the “man” would want to have a looksee in it first.
@DeeJayQueue: hit the nail on the head
How can it be “unjust enrichment” if the bank gave it to the state. I’m not saying it’s right, but the bank didn’t make any profit beyond the fee for issuing a cashier’s check.
@Falconfire: If she’s 82, she wasn’t born before 1920.
@Keter: S&L’s weren’t banks. Neither are credit unions.
@CaffeinatedSquint: Credit unions are NOT more secure.
I’m sorry I work for one of the nations largest banks. The attorney for Chase is exactly correct. Each state has their own unclaimed property laws. Why not put money in a bank account? Even though a bank account is subject to unclaimed property laws the bank can and will notify you if your accounts become dormant or escheated (turned over to the state). This kind of ignorance is what I see on a daily basis. If she lived 22 years without that money than obviously she didn’t need it that bad. I’m sure she’ll complain about her attorney’s hidden fees when her case is over. Maybe she should burry it in the back yard. Then she can sue nature when a natural disaster destroys her home and her money is lost. Ignorance is bliss.
@Saboth:
Think that matters? Their wages can just be garnished, their money will be taken before they even see their check.
In the end, this is a pretty messed up thing. The interesting question is whether they actually informed the person of this taking place or it saying it on the check. The state can’t seem to find a record of them getting that money, is the bank trying to keep it all? Is this the only case of Chase not sending money to the state?
As momma always says… stupid is as stupid does.
Stupid people are everywhere. They get taken all the time.
We can all feel sorry for this lady but she is an idiot.
I still think chase should honor the check though. WTF is 19k to them. It will cost them a lot more in bad publicity.
I feel sorry for the lady, as obviously she’s very elderly and has lost everything, but as much as I hate to say it, it’s her own fault. The five year period isn’t some new rule. From what I understand of the article it was in place when she first got the check. Common sense would tell you to do something better with $20k than let it sit in a safe deposit box as a cashier’s check.
What I don’t understand is this. I think it’s safe to assume that she doesn’t trust the bank if she doesn’t put her money there. Then why did she put it in a safe deposit box IN A BANK? She was using the bank either way. What difference did it make, besides allowing her to collect interest on $20k if she had done the responsible thing?
@Hanke: No, the bank was not Chase back in 1985. In fact, five years ago (or less) it was Bank One, and before that, Premier One, and before that Capital City Bank, and before that I was too young to care what banks were.
Without speaking out of school here, I know a little bit more detail about this story than the newspaper accounts reveal. The problem lies with the Wisconsin State Treasurers’ office, not Chase.
Chase(or actually Bank One) did what the law requires them to do. People get their stuff in a bundle when the law isn’t followed in some circumstances. This should be no different. In fact, the predecessor of Chase, in this case, Bank One, actually turned over the funds to the state, as required by law. And this happened long before Chase was even in the picture.
These banks get audited all the time, and cannot get away with not following these rules. So no matter how badly you might feel for the lady in this story, and she has a legitimate complaint, it’s with the State of Wisconsin.
Having a family member who works in retail banking for Chase and their predecessors, I know that prior to turning anything over to the State, Chase, their predecessor Bank One, and before that Marine Bank here in Wisconsin always makes a very thorough effort to locate folks before turning over funds to the state just to try to avoid this type of thing. And their compliance is compelled by law and monitored via the audits they go through. So why should Chase shareholders pay for the incompetence of the Wisconsin State Treasurers Office, or this poor lady’s mistrust of banks?
Let’s place the blame where it belongs, no matter how badly we feel for this lady. And shame on her attorney. She, better than anyone should know, or could find out with 10 minutes worth of research, that their cause of action lies with the State and not the bank.
Update: [www.wisn.com]