Episode 74: How assets get lost after death and what to do
Episode 74
Host: Jill Mastroianni
How assets get lost after death and what to do
When someone dies, there’s no master list of what they owned and no automatic system that pulls it all together. In this episode, Jill walks through what actually happens when families try to track down assets, why unclaimed property isn’t the safety net people think it is, and how a lack of organization can turn estate administration into a frustrating, years-long scavenger hunt. This is where estate planning meets real life and where most plans break down.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode
There is no central database of your assets. Death doesn’t come with a built-in inventory. When you die, your fiduciary has to piece everything together manually.
Finding assets is one of the hardest parts of estate administration. Executors often start with tax returns to identify income-producing assets but that’s only a partial picture.
Even professionals don’t have perfect tools. Asset-search platforms (like Trustate) can help, but they rely on incomplete databases and still require human follow-up.
People, not systems, are often the biggest bottleneck. Accessing information frequently depends on whether someone is willing (or able) to respond, not whether the information exists.
Unclaimed property is not a reliable backup plan. Assets only end up there if institutions know someone has died and can’t locate an owner and even then, it can take years.
Estate planning isn’t just documents; it’s information sharing. Having a will or trust is not enough if no one knows what you own or where to find it.
Your fiduciary can’t guarantee they’ll find everything. Even the most diligent executor can only follow leads. They can’t recover what they don’t know exists.
Preparation reduces emotional and administrative burden. Organizing your assets now is one of the most practical ways to support your family later.
Resources & Links
Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/_fNqrE306C8
The Death Readiness Playbook. A practical guide + worksheets to help you organize your assets and make estate administration easier for your family: https://www.deathreadiness.com/playbook
Sunny Care Services (Mollie Lacher). Professional executor and personal representative services: https://sunnycareservices.com/
Trustate: https://www.trustate.com/
Pet Information Sheet: https://www.deathreadiness.com/pet-important-info-sheet
Connect with Jill:
Website: DeathReadiness.com
Email: jill@deathreadiness.com
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What actually happens to everything you own when you die? There’s no master list of your assets. And when you’re gone, no one gets a map. Today, I walk through what really happens when no one knows where the assets are, why unclaimed property isn’t the safety net people think it is, and how one overlooked detail can turn into a years-long scavenger hunt for your family.
Welcome to The Death Readiness Podcast. This is not your dad’s estate planning podcast. I’m Jill Mastroianni — estate planning attorney, death readiness guide, and your translator for wills, trusts, probate, and the conversations most families avoid. If you’ve been wondering things like, ‘Can a trust protect what I leave to my children?’ ‘What happens if I give someone power of attorney over me?’ and ‘How can I help my parents while respecting their independence?’ You’re in the right place.
This past weekend, our foster puppy Boots and I headed to another adoption event, this one at Eastern Market in Detroit.
Before the 10 a.m. start, I took her on a long walk to take the edge off. I adjusted her harness just right. I did all the things you do when you want something to go well, even if you know you can’t control the outcome.
We set up on a corner near the food trucks alongside about ten other dogs from Detroit Dog Rescue, all of them hoping—well, all of us hoping—they’d find a home.
Right next to us was Beanie, Boots’ brother. The whole litter had winter clothes themed names—Boots, Beanie, Mittens, Socks.
Beanie was nervous. He stayed tucked in his crate, surrounded by blankets and toys, not quite ready for the chaos of curious strangers.
He got adopted almost immediately.
And Boots? She sat right outside her crate, greeting everyone like a tiny, well-mannered ambassador. Honestly, I’ve never seen her behave better than she did during those three hours. And, still, no adoption yet.
But Boots and I are only one side of the equation. The other side is a potential family choosing her.
Until both sides show up, the outcome doesn’t happen.
That’s how estate planning works, too.
You can have the documents. You can name people to take care of it all. But if those people aren’t willing, available, or prepared to step in, the plan doesn’t work the way you think it will.
Both sides matter.
And, with Boots, these adoption events are really hard for me. I knew from the beginning we were fostering. I knew keeping her as dog number four wasn’t an option.
But that hasn’t stopped me from falling completely in love with her.
In fact, she and I have been sleeping in the guest bedroom together, just trying to soak up as much time as we can together.
The best I could do was prepare for Boots’ adoption event.
I updated her pet information sheet and printed copies to hand to anyone who showed interest. I emailed it to the adoption coordinators. I packed up her toys in a Trader Joe’s paper bag so she’d have something familiar. I even brought her food to hand over to her new owners.
Transitions are hard. But we can make them easier by preparing.
Giving Boots away to her adoptive family is a small transition but it can be instructive when thinking about much more difficult transitions.
Like being the person in charge when someone you love is incapacitated.
Or like serving as executor when someone dies.
It’s emotional, it’s overwhelming, and it’s a lot to carry, especially if you’re figuring it out as you go.
And that brings us to today’s Tuesday Triage question.
I was on a call last week with the family of a man I’ll call Mr. Jones, who recently died in Tennessee.
I’m helping administer the estate, and the professional fiduciary serving as Executor asked me to join to answer some legal questions.
And as you can probably imagine, emotions were high.
At one point, one of the beneficiaries told the Executor that he better find all of Mr. Jones’ assets.
The Executor handled it well. He calmly said he would follow all leads.
But that wasn’t really the answer the beneficiary wanted.
What she wanted was a guarantee.
And there is no guarantee.
Because the person who knew the most about Mr. Jones’ assets… was Mr. Jones.
And when he died, a lot of that knowledge likely died with him.
There’s a big misconception about what actually happens to your “stuff” when you die.
And when I say “stuff,” I mean everything. Your bank accounts, retirement accounts, life insurance policies, business interests, real estate.
I think people imagine there’s some kind of master list.
Like the fiduciary—the executor, the agent under a power of attorney, the administrator—can just type in a name and get a complete inventory of everything you own.
That master list doesn’t exist.
So who figures it out?
Whoever is in charge, the fiduciary.
And one of the fiduciary’s biggest jobs is simply figuring out what you have.
So where do they even start?
Usually, with a tax return.
Because a tax return can at least point to assets that generated income—interest, dividends, and retirement distributions. It’s not perfect, but it’s a starting place.
Now, tracking down assets isn’t really my lane.
I’m not a professional property-finder. Once something is located, I step in and help determine what happens to it—based on the Will or, if there isn’t one, the rules of intestate succession.
But in preparing for this episode, I talked to someone who is in the business of finding things.
I’ve mentioned her before—Mollie Lacher with Sunny Care Services and I’ll include her information in the show notes.
In the right circumstances, Mollie serves as Executor or administrator of Tennessee estates, and part of what she does is track down assets.
I called Mollie in preparation for this episode because I knew she uses a software called Trustate—that’s Trustate, T-R-U-STATE—to assist with locating assets during probate.
I don’t personally use Trustate, but they advertise “real-time asset and liability data in a few clicks.”
That sounds pretty great, right?
And here’s a fun aside—I actually went to high school, Sayville High School on Long Island, with one of the co-founders of Trustate. We didn’t know each other back then, but, still, what a small world.
Now, Trustate is built for professionals. It’s not designed for someone trying to piece together an estate on their own.
And Mollie, who is a professional fiduciary, uses it regularly to help search for assets.
But even a tool like that is only as good as the databases it has access to.
It’s not foolproof.
Mollie told me that when she can pull an employment history—and again, that’s only as good as the underlying data—she’ll go a step further. She’ll reach out directly to HR departments at former employers to track down retirement accounts. And if the person was employed at the time of death, she’ll also ask about life insurance.
So now we’re moving beyond databases… and into people.
And people are where things get interesting.
Mollie and I were remembering a case we worked on together involving the estate of a prominent Nashville businessperson—I’ll call him Mr. Hayes.
We knew where he had last worked. We knew he had a 401(k) there.
So this should have been straightforward.
Mollie found HR contacts on LinkedIn and reached out. They said they didn’t know anything and couldn’t help.
I reached out to the company’s “Chief People Officer.” That title gave me hope. I got no response.
Then I reached out to the president of the company. Also, no response.
So, for my final attempt, I ghostwrote a letter to the president—but this time, it was signed by a male partner at my firm who was about twice my age.
That got a response.
I wasn’t surprised. You’re probably not either.
And Mollie made a really important point—access to information is only as good as the willingness of people to actually give it to you.
So did we eventually get what we needed?
Yes.
Did it take longer than it should have?
Also, yes.
And could Mr. Hayes have made this dramatically easier for everyone involved?
Absolutely.
He could have gotten Death Ready.
Because this is exactly the gap The Death Readiness Playbook is designed to fill.
It’s not just a set of worksheets—although it does include those. It’s also an educational guide to help you understand what you have, where it is, and what your family will actually need to know.
I picked up the Playbooks from the printer on Thursday and sent out the first shipment yesterday.
If you want to make things easier for the people who will one day be in your shoes—or in Mollie’s shoes—you can check it out at deathreadiness.com/playbook. That’s deathreadiness.com/playbook
But do you really need to do all of this?
What about unclaimed property? Unclaimed property is basically a last stop. It’s where assets go when institutions can’t locate an owner after a certain period of time, and the state holds onto them until someone claims them.
Doesn’t everything just end up in unclaimed property eventually?
It would be nice if it worked that way.
It doesn’t.
I took a look at Michigan’s Unclaimed Property Act—and every state has something similar. Generally, funds are considered “unclaimed” after the owner can’t be located for a period of time, often around three years.
For example, a life insurance payout may be considered abandoned if it goes unclaimed for more than three years after someone’s death.
But that assumes the life insurance company knows the person has died.
And if the family doesn’t even know the policy exists… how would they know to notify the company?
You can start to see how this breaks down.
This is how money gets lost.
Let me give you a real-life example of what this looks like when no one is connecting the dots.
My husband and I bought a house in Ferndale, Michigan in July of 2023.
Since the day we moved in, we’ve been receiving mail from the financial services company Raymond James addressed to the house’s prior owner—not even the person we bought the house from, but the owner before him.
And the envelope is addressed to him… followed by, in parentheses, “deceased.”
So Raymond James appears to know he has died.
Every time I get one of these letters, I write “addressee unknown, return to sender” and send it back.
I even went to the post office to try to stop it. They told me I’d need to go to a different branch, and honestly… that was a step too far for me.
So the mail keeps coming.
We’re now renting out that house—almost three years later—and this deceased individual is still receiving financial correspondence at that address.
Three years with every letter returned. And still nothing has changed.
Based on the addresses, which includes the letters, RIRA, which stands for rollover IRA, it appears that this person had an IRA at Raymond James. But if his family were just waiting for it to show up at unclaimed property, it’s not there. At least not yet.
And that’s the point.
Unclaimed property is not a system you want to rely on. It’s slow, incomplete, and dependent on information that may never get where it needs to go.
Earlier in this episode, I talked about packing up Boots’ things—her food and her toys—before taking her to the adoption event.
And that was emotionally hard for me.
Likewise, I’m not saying end-of-life preparedness is easy. Getting Death Ready takes effort. It might even feel uncomfortable.
But I knew that doing that work would make things easier for Boots.
And that’s what I want you to think about.
Your people, your family and your friends.
Do you want to make things easier for them?
Or are you okay with them trying to piece your life together… while they’re grieving… on what is essentially the world’s worst scavenger hunt?
Because that’s the alternative.
If you want to make it easier, you can check out The Death Readiness Playbook at deathreadiness.com/playbook. That’s deathreadiness.com/playbook.
Thanks for listening today.
This is Death Readiness, real, messy and yours to own. I’m Jill Mastroianni and I’m here to help you sort through it, especially when you don’t know where to start.
Hi, I'm April, Jill's daughter. Thanks for listening to The Death Readiness Podcast. While my mom is an attorney, she’s not your attorney. The Death Readiness Podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. It does not provide legal advice. For legal guidance tailored to your unique situation, consult with a licensed attorney in your state. To learn more about the services my mom offers, visit DeathReadiness.com.
