Recent surveys conducted by SOS Children's Villages (German) say, 86% of the people want money from these accounts transferred to the fund for social projects after a reasonable deadline. Only 8% claimed that the government should take over these accounts and that 2% offered to belong to the bank.

Germany has no formal legal definition of the "forgotten account", but generally they are bank deposits or securities (the stock and bond) no transactions for long periods.

There are $4.2 billion euro (4.9 billion) in the forgotten accounts, or "distinguished account" in Germany, according to the 2021 report of the German Ministry of Education and Research. Some other estimates suggest that the figure may be up to 9 billion euros.

"The Lost Account" usually arises when a person dies, but the relative, the heir, does not know or struggles to determine its existence.

Online banking trends make matters more complicated. When there is no preprinted paper available, account information usually lies either in an email box or on a computer hard drive. Unclassional financial assets such as pre-coded or NFT are even harder to track.

Get out! [ The euro was taken on May 30, 2022. Image: Reuters](htttts pmtw)

  • The euro was taken on May 30, 2022. Image: Reuters*

The handling of property in forgotten accounts has not yet been specifically regulated in Germany, resulting in various views. In law, the forgotten accounts were not to be defaulted as property of the bank or government.

The bank must therefore keep them indefinitely, the ownership of the account holder or heir never ceases to operate. The government can only be adopted if identified as the heirs according to the rules of inheritance, not according to the rules of property.

Lack of legal framework causes the dissemination of the forgotten account mainly of the decision-making banks. Most banks look on factors such as the deceased account holder and cannot find the heir; there is no connection from the customer for years or any related information is obsolete.

This also creates gaps so that the banks themselves decide how much effort they make in the search for the owner or heir. A major obstacle is the very strict German regulations of personal data protection.

Germany has tried to solve the problem. Nearly a decade ago, Norbert Walter-Borjans, the head of the North Rhine-Westphalia state of Germany, estimated about 2 billion euros in inactive accounts. He appealed to the establishment of the nation's registration system on forgotten property and had many efforts to implement the idea.

The government of Prime Minister Friedrich Merz compiled the bill to create an online, public, centralized database, helping the heir to research the property information. But the bill has not yet been completed.

Beatrice Eisenschmidt, a member of the VDEE leadership - the association representing experts in the search for heirs, the headquarters in Berlin, claimed that the most important solution was to build the database focused on non-worked accounts.

Experts have stated that an investigation has to be sent to many financial institutions, with the process of time and expense, causing many heirs to give up. "So many of the heirs decide not to continue pursuing research procedures," said Eisenschmidt.

** While the direction of the forgotten account in Germany has not yet fallen, many other countries already have specific rules**. In the UK, inactive accounts after about 15 years are often transferred into a fund that supports social and environmental projects. However, the owner or heir can still ask that the amount be returned indefinitely.

In France, after 10 years of inactivity, accounts and life insurance contracts will be transferred to the CDC, a public financial organization. After the next 20 years, it officially became state property.

Switzerland applied the same approach but longer. The banks are required to preserve the property and continue to manage inactive accounts. To assist in finding the owner, the country builds the focused database for forgotten accounts. If after 60 years of no contact, the account information will be public and the heirs have one year to make the proceedings. After this deadline, all requests will be lost and the property passed to the government.

In the United States, processing of forgotten accounts adjusts to state-by-state rules. In most cases, the bank has to try to contact the account owners after 3-5 years of inactivity. If it fails, state authorities - where the account holder has the last address, will take it. Property is kept at the property management agency, and in most cases the owner can still get it back at any time.

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