“Our biggest year ever!”: Update from BC Unclaimed’s Executive Director, Sherry MacLennan

As summer hits full swing, staff at BC Unclaimed are hard at work searching for the owners of monies that we received in 2023 —when an unprecedented $34 million in unclaimed funds was submitted. As soon as we receive the funds, the info is logged in our database so that owners can find their money if they search on our website, even while we are looking for them. This two-pronged approach works well —we returned nearly 4 million dollars to their rightful owners in 2023.

Where does this money come from? While unclaimed funds can come from many sources, last year most came from court cases where money was paid into court and never paid out. Anyone who had to pay money into court for a debt, foreclosure or other matter, should check to see if there was money left over after an order is made paying the person, company, bank or credit union who was owed money. That leftover money usually belongs to the person who paid it into court in the first place. If this is your situation, you need to get a court order that says that remaining money is yours. Usually, it is easy to prove you own the money, but there is a lot of paperwork involved, especially in the Supreme Court.

We recognized this can be difficult and to help people in this situation, we partnered with People’s Law School, a not for profit whose website helps people solve every day legal problems. Their easy-to-understand website now has information on unclaimed funds, and a special section on claiming court funds. We hope these resources make a positive impact on the number of people who can claim what is rightfully theirs. We’ve also been working hard to raise awareness of these unclaimed funds within the legal profession. If more lawyers are aware of unclaimed property legislation, they’ll be more likely to advise their clients and unrepresented opposing parties to go back to court for their share of funds.

With the high volume of unclaimed funds received in 2023, we were able to make our largest donation ever in 2024 to the Vancouver Foundation —over $9.5 million. These funds then enrich communities across British Columbia by supporting a wide variety of non-profit and charitable initiatives, creating jobs and social impacts. This funding has permitted innovation, including stable funding grants of three-year terms and support everything from arts programming, shelter for refugees, wildlife conservation, marginalized communities, food security, and recovery from the pandemic. In addition to making a social impact, funds received enable us to pay our operating expenses out of interest earned and continuously have cash on hand to pay out any claims that are made. To learn more about our work, see our Annual Report.