How to Search for Unclaimed Life Insurance Benefits

If an insurance company can't find a beneficiary, it will give the death benefit to the government.
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When a person with life insurance dies, the insurance company will do its best to find the beneficiary of the policy. However, all too often insurance companies do not have the contact information of beneficiaries and can't track them down. According to the New York Times, hundreds of millions of dollars of life insurance death benefits go unclaimed each year. When this happens, insurance companies send the unpaid money to the government to be stored under unclaimed property. If you think you might have an unclaimed insurance benefit, you can easily search for it through the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators.

Step 1

Visit the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrator's website. Its homepage is www.unclaimed.org.

Step 2

Click the state that you think might be holding your unclaimed life insurance. You can search as many states as you want.

Step 3

Create a log in name if necessary. Some states like Virginia ask you to create a free account to start a search, while others just let you search right away.

Step 4

Enter in your name and specify that you are looking for life insurance in the search engine. The program will search that state's unclaimed property to see if you are owed any money.

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