Key insights
- The post discusses the difficulty in locating stock assets belonging to a deceased individual. While the situation highlights potential inefficiencies in estate asset discovery, it has a negligible direct impact on broader US equity market movements. The issue is specific to individual estate management rather than a systemic market risk or opportunity.
For context, my father passed away back in 2008, and much of his estate was sold off to cover debts, and everything else was passed down to be through probate ruling. At the time, neither me nor my mother knew anything about him holding any stock/shares.
Fast-forward to a few years ago, I learn about Unclaimed Property and discover that my father had a share and some dividends from said share and another mystery share reported as unclaimed. I am currently going through the process of claiming them, but it's an annoyingly long process even with all the information. The thing I need advice on is that the dividends from the mystery share was reported by Computershare. They have a page on how to navigate a deceased shareholder's estate, but they require the account number. I have 0 idea how to go about finding this since I don't have papers with his account number on it, otherwise I would've learned about these much earlier than just now.
Any advice at all on how to navigate this would be much appreciated. My father didn't leave anything in writing whatsoever, nor keep track of much of his stuff so it's been decades of headaches.