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Edited By CRISTINA LOUROSA-RICARDO

There is a $659.01 check with actress Angelina Jolie’s name on it sitting on California’s unclaimed-property list. Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has at least two unclaimed checks in his state. Prominent bioethicist Ezekiel Emanuel has under $100 lingering in unclaimed property in Illinois.

At a time when states are criticizing insurance companies for not doing enough to find beneficiaries for unclaimed life-insurance policies, it appears the states aren’t always doing a terrific job of uniting funds with the parties owed them, either. Somehow, over the course of several years, it’s been too hard to locate Ms. Jolie and Messrs. Giuliani and Emanuel and return their money, despite the fact that they are well known.

That doesn’t provide much hope for the thousands of other people with names like John Smith who have unclaimed property held by the states where they lived at one time.

Insurers and other companies that fail to find the owners of dormant accounts or uncashed paychecks eventually turn those funds over to the state with the last known address for the person, usually after two to five years. But unclaimed-property laws vary from state to state, as does their success rates in reuniting owners with their money.

So are states any better than companies at reuniting people with their lost property?

“The answer is, not really. In fact, some states can be even worse,” says Brendan Bridgeland, director of the Center for Insurance Research, a nonprofit consumer group.

However, the major difference between companies and states is the ability of consumers to find their lost accounts, Mr. Bridgeland says. It is easier for a resident to locate money through searchable websites once it is turned over to a state. Besides states’ proprietary sites, a centralized website,
MissingMoney.com
, allows consumers to run searches across many states.

By the time unclaimed property finds its way to the state level, the original holder—be it a bank or utility—has often tried to find the owners and struck out. States aren’t eager to spend tax dollars hunting down individuals and tend to rely on mass outreach at state-fair booths or staged media events to raise awareness of their online claims sites.

New York, Mr. Giuliani’s home state, has arranged some particularly high-profile events.

California sends out letters to every person owed $50 or more before that property is turned over to the state. The state has also created a unit dedicated to locating owners with no valid address, using public databases.

In Illinois, which has Mr. Emanuel sitting in its database, State Treasurer Dan Rutherford runs “Cash Dash” events where he and staffers show up at town halls or chambers of commerce and invite residents to see if they are owed any money.

—Lynn Cowan

WSJ.com

IRA Perk

President Barack Obama’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2013 may be calling for new taxes on the wealthy, but it includes a perk for older people with relatively small individual retirement accounts.

Deep in the budget is a provision that would eliminate required minimum distributions for people who are at least 70½ years old whose tax-deferred retirement-plan balances do not exceed $75,000.

“This would simplify tax compliance for these seniors. They do not ever have to worry about RMDs and can withdraw at their own pace without worrying about calculating the RMD or taking the right amount at the right time,” says Ed Slott, a consultant who specializes in individual retirement accounts in Rockville Centre, N.Y.

Keep in mind that the $75,000 limit refers to the total balance of all IRAs. That means no splitting up your holdings into a bunch of different accounts—they all count as one.

—Kelly Greene

Total Return Blog

WSJ.com

Pricier Flights?

Travelers may soon have to fork over an extra $2.50 each way on airfare.

President Obama’s proposed budget calls for the minimum passenger-security fee—the charge initiated after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to fund extra airport security—to double from $2.50 to $5 per trip this year, and rise to $7.50 by 2018. The move would generate an extra $25.5 billion over 10 years, $18 billion of which will go into the general fund for debt reduction.

Tacking such fees onto travel expenses is becoming an increasingly popular way for local, state and the federal government to raise revenue, experts say.

But it’s unclear whether the budget proposal’s fees will stick. “Consumers are already sensitive to higher prices,” says Rick Seaney, chief executive of fare-tracking site FareCompare.com. Taxes and fees on airfare are up 37% since 2001 and currently account for about 20% of the total cost to fly.

Higher fees could also hurt airline operations, he says, leading to fewer carriers in some markets—and, in turn, higher prices overall. When the government first floated the possibility of higher fees in October, the Air Transport Association of America warned it could keep some consumers from flying, leading to cuts in service and industry jobs.

—Kelli B. Grant

Real-Time Advice Blog

SmartMoney.com

Foreclosure Help

Borrowers seeking a review of their mortgage foreclosures to see if they are eligible to receive compensation or other remedies because of errors in foreclosure actions on their homes have until July 31 to submit their requests to bank regulators, according to recent releases by the Federal Reserve and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. The deadline was extended from April 30.

The foreclosure reviews are required by major banks that were sanctioned by the OCC and other regulators last year for negligence in residential mortgage loan servicing and foreclosure processes. Borrowers are eligible for a review if their mortgage was active in the foreclosure process between Jan. 1, 2009 and Dec. 31, 2010.

—Ronald D. Orol

MarketWatch.com

The Aggregator, edited by Cristina Lourosa-Ricardo, features news from The Wall Street Journal and other Dow Jones publications.

Email: cristina.lourosa@wsj.com