§ 1510.When Intangible Personal Property Escheats to State

Before any of the specific property-type rules in this article can apply, California has to have a legitimate claim to the property in the first place, and Section 1510 supplies that threshold test. The clearest case is the simplest: if the holder's own records show the apparent owner's last known address is in California, the property escheats here once the specific conditions in Sections 1513 through 1521 are met.

When no address appears on the holder's records at all, the section falls back to secondary rules. California can still claim the property if the apparent owner's last known address was here, if the holder is domiciled in California and has not already paid the property to the state of the owner's last known address, or if the holder is a California government entity that has not made that payment either. The section then reaches further still, letting California claim property whose owner's address is in another state that does not itself provide for escheat, or in a foreign country, so long as the holder is domiciled here or is a California government entity. Together these rules keep two states from fighting over the same property while making sure it does not fall through the cracks when no state's escheat law would otherwise reach it.