§ 1564.5.Abandoned Iolta Property Account

Money that escheats from Interest on Lawyers' Trust Accounts, the pooled accounts attorneys use to hold client funds, gets treated differently from other escheated money under Section 1564.5, which carves out its own accounting track instead of following the general rule in Section 1564. All such money goes into the Abandoned IOLTA Property Account, a new account this section establishes within the Unclaimed Property Fund.

Within that account, twenty-five percent goes into a further IOLTA Claims Reserve Subaccount, which is continuously appropriated to the Controller for paying refunds and claims tied to escheated IOLTA funds under this chapter, keeping enough on hand to satisfy claimants who come forward later. The remaining balance, outside that reserve, gets transferred each year to the Public Interest Attorney Loan Repayment Account rather than to the General Fund, supporting attorneys working in the public interest instead of general state spending. Before each annual transfer, the Controller still has to record the name and last known address of everyone entitled to the property, and that record stays open to public inspection during regular business hours, just as it does for the general Abandoned Property account.