Until the end of last year, the owners of anonymous passbooks, which had already expired years ago, had the last opportunity to apply for their money with Česká spořitelna. In the end, the savings bank was left with CZK 1.78 billion, which no one collected, so it donated it to charity. This is not the only case when we can encounter forgotten money, or property that the owners do not claim. Take a look at some common examples.
Typically, owners of shares may encounter forgotten assets. Let’s leave aside shares in paper, i.e. paper form, which generally tend to “wander” somewhere. In this regard, let us look at book-entry shares, which today exist in electronic form in the form of an entry in a database. This also applies to many shares that were issued as part of coupon privatization.
“Those who participated in the privatization can still be owners of already forgotten shares, which could have increased their value several times. It should be added that in many cases, on the contrary, the company that issued the shares has ceased to exist, and they are thus worthless,” says Jiří Pech, investment analyst at Broker Trust.
It is relatively easy to find out whether a person owns any shares in book-entry form online. On the website of the Central Securities Depository (www.cdcp.cz), it is enough to enter the birth number in the search field in the section for the general public, and the interviewer will soon find out whether any shares are registered in his name. It is also possible to verify whether there is still no account in the records, for example, of a deceased relative whose shares would have been omitted in the inheritance proceedings.
A more detailed statement of which shares are specifically in question can be obtained by the interested party if the information relates to him/her, either through his/her stock trader, which is the so-called Shareholder Transaction. a participant in the depository, or for a fee of five hundred crowns directly from the depository.
4000 buildings without owners
Among the forgotten assets in the Czech Republic are a number of real estate. Throughout the country, the state is looking for the owners of four thousand buildings, including villas and apartment buildings, for which there is a note in the land register – owner unknown. Thousands of other properties without an owner represent various plots of land, and these are not always just small fields, but also large agricultural plots or forests. Traces of the owners end up, for example, abroad, where they went into exile or became victims of World War II.
On the website of the Office for the Representation of the State in Property Matters (www.uzsvm.cz), a list of properties with an insufficiently identified owner can be found. If someone believes that he could be the owner of such a property or its rightful heir, he should collect as many documents as possible that will speak in favor of his ownership and contact the authorities.
“The original owners, although in most cases they will be their heirs, have less than seven years left to apply for the land and buildings. If they do not do so by the end of 2023, the property will definitely be forfeited to the state,” says Jiří Kryl, mortgage analyst at Broker Trust.
There is also another case associated with the inheritance of the deceased, where relatives can unknowingly deprive themselves of the money to which they are entitled. These are situations where the deceased had life insurance or possibly other insurance, typically hospitalization insurance. In such a case, if the insured person was in hospital before death, the benefit for this event passes to the heir.
Authorized persons must contact themselves
“Insurance companies do not automatically contact entitled persons for payment from death insurance, but the entitled persons themselves must contact the insurance company. In some cases, relatives are not aware of their claim at all or have problems finding the deceased’s insurance policy. For example, a notary can help them contact the insurance company,” points out Dušan Šídlo, an insurance analyst at Broker Trust.
Other relatively common cases where people leave money lying idle without knowing about it include, for example, unclaimed postal orders. Czechs do not collect money worth more than twenty million crowns a year.
Four and a half thousand people also did not collect the money they were entitled to from the abolished second pillar of the pension system until last September. People did not lose their finances, they were automatically sent to the locally competent tax office, where they can apply for them additionally.