New York
New York's Office of Unclaimed Funds runs the most paper-disciplined heir process in the country. Two of its rules cause most New York stalls, and neither is on the claim form's first page: the Table of Heirs must account for every member of every class, and the court's letters certificate goes stale in six months. Here is the New York claim with both traps marked.
New York maps the family on a Table of Heirs: the deceased, the spouse, every child, every parent, every sibling — alive, deceased (with dates), or accounted for. The discipline practitioners warn about is literal: leave one line blank and the claim freezes. One unreachable sibling doesn't excuse the line; the state wants the sibling named, the attempts documented, and the class complete. The kit's worksheet is built around this form, with the unreachable-heir case worked as the example. (California and Ohio use a Table of Heirs too — the full picture is on the Table of Heirs page.)
Where the claim runs through an estate, the Comptroller's office wants the Surrogate's Court letters certificate dated within the last 6 months. Families file with the letters they got at probate — sometimes years old — and the claim bounces for fresh ones. Order a current certificate from the court before you file, not after the deficiency letter arrives. Practitioners call this the #1 documented New York stall; it's also the easiest to pre-empt.
New York's simplified route is voluntary administration under SCPA §1301, for estates of $50,000 or less in personal property. (Real property the deceased owned alone can't pass this way.) A $60,000 estate is over the line — full Surrogate's Court administration applies, and the letters from that proceeding feed the claim. The checker draws this line for your amount.
New York caps finder fees at 15% (Abandoned Property Law §1416), requires the agreement on the Comptroller's prescribed form, notarized, with a bold 12-point disclosure that the claim can be filed free. An agreement that isn't on that form, or that hides the free route, fails the statute. The official door is ouf.osc.ny.gov.
Run your own claim. The free checker takes your state, your relationship, and your amount — and returns the probate-skip verdict, your document chain in order, the signatures you'll need, and the finder fee you'd avoid. Run the checker →
The pages above are the map. The kit is the paperwork: the per-state checklists, the Table of Heirs worksheet, the letters that line up every heir's signature, and the chapter for the state's reply.
One payment, yours to keep. We never file for you and never touch your money — you file everything yourself, with the state. See everything inside the kit →