§ 1501.5.Property Received By State Not to Permanently Escheat to State

Escheat sounds final, but Section 1501.5 makes clear it is not. Property the state receives under this chapter does not permanently escheat, regardless of any other law that might suggest otherwise, meaning an owner can still come forward years later and recover what belongs to them. The Legislature added the second half of this section specifically to correct any court ruling that read the law differently, stating flatly that any decision to the contrary is erroneous and inconsistent with what lawmakers always intended.

The section then commits the state to doing more to reunite people with their property in the first place. It calls for notifying owners before their property escheats, for a more active postescheat effort to track down owners after the transfer happens, and for a waiting period of at least seven years after property arrives at the state before any of it that has no apparent commercial value can be disposed of. Read together, this section frames the rest of the chapter, the notice requirements scattered through Article 2 and the claims process elsewhere in this title, as tools for reuniting owners with their money, not permanent forfeitures.