Who Knew?

A few months ago, February in fact, I got a phone call. Not an odd occurrence in the general sense, but this one was different. This was someone telling me I had unclaimed money, and did I want them to get for me. Being both skeptical, and fairly internet savvy, I asked "couldn't I do this myself?" and they said yes.

So I googled missing money, and found a website that you click on your State from the map of the US, and it links to States' Offices of Unclaimed funds, and I began my search. Apparently Horizon Health care got all confused when someone dropped the last letter of MBB's first name thus rendering him a female. This threw them off to the point that they could not send me my money, but instead sent it to the state of NY, even though the address was clearly listed. Hmmm, maybe Government SHOULD take over health care!

NY State has an excellent website, you can fill in the form online, and then print it out, requiring only a signature and a notary Public stamp/signature. So I printed out the form, and called my brother (the lawyer!!!), because he is a notary.

You know how it's good to have certain professions in the family? You would think that this would be one of them, but Mr. Must-Play-By-The-Rules, won't sign anything unless it was signed in front of him. That's all fine and good, but between his schedule and MBB's skepticism that this was worth anything more than 20 bucks, MBB did not think this warranted making an effort to go see my brother to get it signed. It wasn't getting done.

So I printed it out a few more times, because it got lost in the Bermuda Triangle that is my desk, and forgot about it, then remembered, then lost the paper, then printed it again, and forgot about it...until....

...my daughter's graduation party. I walked into the kitchen, and there was my niece, standing with someone I did not know. That's not always strange at a party, except that the party was in my house. Across the island from these two young ladies, was a man hunched over this stranger's paper, signing and using a stamp. Lo, and behold! Here was a notary, in my house!!! At the same time as MBB!!! What are the odds?

Well, pretty good actually that they'd be in the same house at the same time at this party, since the notary was, as noted above, my brother. (the odds that MBB was actual wearing STREET CLOTHES when in the house at the same time as my brother were significantly lower, since many of said brother's visits are late Saturday night). The odds that he had the notary stamp with him were pretty low too, but there it was! Luckily, I DID remember the umpteenth version of the Unclaimed Property Form, and got it signed. I then sealed it, and of course it took another 5 days to mail. Just because. That was June 15.

This morning I went to get mail, all excited because I was expecting some mail from my kids away at camp (When I spoke to them they told me they had written). Those letters were indeed there, as was a letter from the Comptroller of the State of New York.

Through all of this, we never knew how much money was involved. I assumed, for no reason at all, it was about $60, MBB thought less than $20.

We know now.

$321.26

How cool is that?