Finding Unclaimed Child Support Money Made Easy

The United States is full of unclaimed money. As CNN reports, $58 billion lay around unclaimed, and some of that money comes from unclaimed child support. While the sum you might be entitled to probably won’t inspire you to quit your day job, any bonus is welcome.

DoNotPay can help you perform an easy and fast search of national unclaimed assets databases whether you’re looking for unclaimed insurance, child support money, or inheritance from deceased relatives.

What Is Unclaimed Child Support Money?

If the court decided that the other parent of your child needs to pay child support, but you left the state without providing a new address, the court might have a couple of uncashed checks waiting for you.

Custodial parents rarely receive child support money directly. In most cases, an intermediary institution—such as a court—collects the funds from the obligor or debtor and distributes them to the obligee.

The problems arise when the obligee changes residence and omits to update the court with her or his new address. Without the means to contact the custodial parent, courts have no other option than to keep the money until the obligee shows up or turn them over to the state’s unclaimed asset programs, as the local legislation requires.

Each state has legislation that regulates unclaimed child support, relevant deadlines and time frames, and how the state can use the funds in the absence of the obligee.

How To Find Lost Child Support Money on Your Own

If you’re not sure whether some of the unclaimed child support money belongs to you, you have several methods to look for it:

1. Contact the courthouse or another institution that processed your child support money in the first place—If you don’t have the contact details at hand, one quick Google search will help you figure out the phone number, email, or postal address that you can use to get in touch with them and ask about any uncollected checks
2. Use online unclaimed child support databases—Directly contacting institutions that are in charge of unclaimed child support money may take too long, and your case may end up in a pile of unresolved paperwork. For these reasons, many states have online registries where you can search unclaimed assets by name, location, or Social Security number. A centralized, federal resource for finding lost child support doesn’t exist, but using any online search engine can point you in the right direction

How To Find Unclaimed Child Support Money With DoNotPay

Browsing the internet for unclaimed child support money sounds easy enough, but it can get exhausting quickly—especially if you moved around a lot. Thanks to the differences in state legislation, finding the right resource where you can check how much money you’re entitled to may take too long and make you lose your patience.

You don’t have to give up on the money that is rightfully yours, and that could bring your child a better life. The lack of a unified federal platform for unclaimed assets has inspired DoNotPay to come up with the next best service—the Missing Money feature.

DoNotPay uses the power of artificial intelligence to comb through existing online databases in the blink of an eye and spares you countless hours that you would spend in front of a computer otherwise. You only need to follow these few steps:

1. Set up a DoNotPay account in your default web browser
2. Select the Missing Money option when you sign in
3. Include your contact information like name and previous addresses
4. Click on Claim My Property next to the child support money in the search results

Our AI bots will file a claim on your behalf in an instant. You can focus on other items from your to-do list and wait for the child support check to arrive in the mail.

What To Do With the Lost Child Support Money Once It Arrives?

Two factors matter the most when deciding on how to put the recovered child support money to use—the intended purpose and collected amount.

No matter how much money you manage to get through this process, you should use it only to meet the needs of the child or children. The necessities that count as appropriate when spending child support money include:

• Home expenses related to the safety of the child’s environment, including rent, mortgage, and utilities
• Medical costs that may include medicine, eyeglasses, routine checkups, dental care, or health insurance costs
• School expenses like books, clothes, tuition, supplies, or field trips
• Expenses for various extracurricular activities, such as sports, summer camps, and music lessons
• Miscellaneous costs pertaining to food, toys, clothes, or furniture

Even if the sum is significant and a certain amount of money is left, you should save it for later expenses or put it into the child’s savings account. Using money for personal expenses that don’t benefit the child is not recommended since, in some states, a court may demand a justification of expenses from the custodial parent.

Other Types of Unclaimed Money

Lost child support is not the only type of unclaimed money that exists. The great thing is that you can use DoNotPay’s search platform for all unclaimed assets under your name.

While not exhaustive, the lists in the table below may give you some ideas of what kind of funds might be waiting for you to claim them:

Tips To Avoid Losing Child Support Money in the Future

Most cases involving unclaimed child support money occur because important information was not communicated properly. While government institutions are responsible for distributing child support funds, they usually won’t go out of their way to locate you if your contact details change for any reason.

Here are several tips on how to avoid losing the money meant for your child ever again:

• Keep the court or relevant institution posted about any life changes that could affect the child support money distribution, such as relocations and name changes
• Develop a personal record system to keep track of all monthly child support payments
• Check whether your state allows child support direct deposits

How Else Can DoNotPay Help Me?

DoNotPay can help you search for unclaimed assets in all 50 states, from Alaska to Texas. We will assist if you need to claim your inheritance money or deal with inactive Wells Fargo and Bank of America accounts.

When you access DoNotPay in any web browser, you will have a chance to explore the full range of our portfolio, including useful features like:

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