Request By:
Hon. James W. Tate II
Jefferson County Attorney's Office
Twenty-seventh Floor
Citizens Plaza
Louisville, Kentucky 40202
Opinion
Opinion By: Steven L. Beshear, Attorney General; Joseph R. Johnson, Assistant Attorney General
In your recent letter to the Attorney General, you state that your office often cannot identify checks or money orders received through your Child Support Division and that such funds are placed in an escrow account. Your question is whether after a certain period of time such funds escheat to the state. The answer is that such property does escheat to the state after seven (7) years.
KRS 393.090 provides as follows:
Except as otherwise provided in KRS 393.010, all intangible property, not otherwise covered by this chapter, including any income or increment thereon and deducting any lawful charges, that is held or owing in this state by any person and has remained unclaimed by the owner for more than seven years after it became payable or distributable is presumed abandoned.
Having been presumed abandoned in accordance with KRS 393.090, the property must be reported to the Department of Revenue, pursuant to KRS 393.110 and must be turned over to the Department pursuant to this statute.