I found an old CD with about $30,000 in it — but the bank says it has no record. Can I still recover the money?

When a certificate of deposit reaches maturity, account holders usually have only a limited window to withdraw the money. If they do nothing, the CD may automatically renew at the prevailing rate. Because that new rate can be lower than the original one, it is usually wise to act quickly and decide what to do with the funds.

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But what if a CD was left untouched for many years, even decades? That is the situation Maisie appears to be in. She has recently found a long-forgotten CD that she believes should still hold roughly $30,000.

The CD matured about 25 years ago, and Maisie wants to claim the money. The bank, however, says it cannot pay her because the paperwork does not definitively prove it still owes her the funds. In its view, she may have redeemed the CD long ago, even if she no longer has the original document.

So what options does Maisie have, and is there a realistic chance she can recover the cash?

Banks do not keep dormant accounts forever

Maisie’s main obstacle is that the CD is probably dormant by now. “CDs are generally considered abandoned and escheated to the state three to five years after the maturity date,” Ricky Maldonado, co-founder and CEO of Reclaim.org, told Moneywise. The exact timing depends on the escheatment rules in the state involved.

There is another problem: the bank may no longer have the records. “Federal rules generally require five years of retention for specified bank records,” Junde Liu, a tax and corporate associate at Shuffield Lowman, told Moneywise. “A separate rule requires banks to retain customer identifying information for five years after a deposit account closes, while records describing identity verification generally remain for five years after they are made.”

Gene Boykin Jr., founder and CEO of The GoGetter Family, a wealth protection firm, told Moneywise that Maisie should still contact the bank and ask for an account history review. He said she should provide as much detail as possible, including the name on the account, the purchase date and the account number.

Boykin also said she can use the FDIC’s BankFind Suite to track down the bank’s successor if the institution merged or changed ownership. Even so, there is a strong chance the bank simply no longer has the information needed to help, since it may have destroyed the records long ago and still have acted within the law.

Try an unclaimed property search

If the bank cannot locate Maisie’s missing $30,000 CD, that does not necessarily mean the money is gone for good.

“When a CD sits untouched long enough, the bank has to hand the money over to the state as unclaimed property. It does not vanish. The state just becomes the holder,” said David Kassir, managing director of private wealth management at Manna Wealth Management.

Kassir recommended that Maisie search the unclaimed property website for every state she has lived in, and also check missingmoney.com, which allows searches across most states in one place.

If she finds the funds, Boykin said she can simply complete the claim through the official program. If she does not, he suggested looking beyond state databases. USA.gov’s unclaimed-money directory links to resources for failed bank deposits, credit union deposits, pensions, unpaid wages and savings bonds.

That said, success is not guaranteed. If the bank that held Maisie’s CD failed, the money may already be out of reach.

As Boykin explained, “what many people don’t know is that unclaimed money is not always available forever. Under 12 U.S.C. 1822(e)(5), certain unclaimed deposits from failed banks that have been delivered to a state must be returned to the FDIC if they remain unclaimed for ten years after that delivery. They become the FDIC’s property.”

Keep your account information current

Hopefully, Maisie’s $30,000 can be found in an unclaimed property database. If not, her situation is still a useful reminder that account holders are ultimately responsible for keeping track of their money.

That means watching CD maturity dates, keeping a list of accounts and making sure the bank has your latest contact information so you can be notified before an account is closed and the money is distributed.

As Kassir said, “The simplest fix of all is keeping your accounts consolidated, so your money never goes missing in the first place.”