Unclaimed balances
An unclaimed balance refers to an account that has been opened in the Court Funds Office, from monies lodged, and where no movement of funds into or out of the account has taken place for a period of 10 years.
The Unclaimed Balances (UB) Section investigates any case it receives if the value of the account is £400 or more. The first stage of the investigation is to obtain and collate all possible sources of account information. This will usually consist of the details held by the Court Funds Office' live Funds Accounting System or its financial archives, a Lodgment Schedule and possibly a Paying In Affidavit. Once this is completed, the investigation proceeds to the tracing stage.
The section employs the Law Society and Companies House websites to find solicitors and companies. The solicitors who represented the respective parties in a case will be contacted for further information. The section will also attempt to trace the clients directly and utilises a software program called Tracemaster to assist in this task. Tracemaster holds information derived from the electoral roll. Staff can search for the address details of individuals and companies within a particular locality, for example, a town or county or nationwide. The amount of information that the section possesses about a particular case will help determine how the investigation proceeds.
For example, imagine a sum was lodged in respect of the case of Iqbal Khan v Gertrude Weisweiller at Plymouth County Court in 2005. UB Staff would initially search for any individuals by that name within Plymouth. If that proved unsuccessful they could extend the search to larger area such as the county of Devon or even the entire UK. By contrast, money may have been lodged in the Chancery Division of the Royal Courts of Justice as a result of the case of Smith v Jones. In this instance, it would be very difficult to trace the clients because the names of the litigants are very common and there is no specific area where the investigation could be focused.
The UB Section has considered employing tracing agents for some time but one of the fundamental issues that have prevented this method from being implemented is how the agent's costs would be recouped. Tracing agents typically wish to charge a percentage of the value of the assets involved and would probably not be interested in the majority of the accounts held by the UB Section because their value is under £5,000. Members of the UB Section have focused their efforts on achieving results using the relatively basic search method highlighted above. This does not involve very detailed and time-consuming research due to the high volume of cases that the section receives. However, more recently the UB Section has begun researching probate records and births, deaths and marriages data in order to trace clients.
We keep a register of all cases in the Unclaimed Balances Fund at the public counter of our office. If you believe that you are entitled to any of this money, please contact our Customer Services Helpline and we will be happy to give you advice on how to make a claim.
For further information, please see our leaflet called "Notes for guidance on Unclaimed Funds in Chancery".
If you would like to write to us or give feedback, please go to our contact us page.