Word: escheats
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Dates: during 1937-1937
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Just as nature abhors a vacuum so the law abhors a vacant ownership of anything. In the U. S. the States are the original and ultimate proprietors of all lands within their jurisdictions. And the ancient feudal doctrine of Escheat or accidental reverting of lands to the original lord has been applied in modern law not only to lands but to personal property, unclaimed savings deposits, dividends, and securities. Most laymen and many lawyers think of escheat only when persons die without wills and heirs. Last week smart lawyers all over the U. S. eyed with admiration a lawsuit filed...
...lawyers discovered that unused balances of money deposited in Federal Courts disappear into the U. S. Treasury after five years if unclaimed and if the right to the money is not disputed. Realizing that within State boundaries the State is sovereign and that the Federal Government has no escheat powers save in its territories, they probed further, learned that in the custody of the Treasury awaiting disposition was $160,000 in such funds from the District Courts at Philadelphia, Scranton and Pittsburgh...
Under Pennsylvania law the informer of such funds could collect 25% of what is left after the State pays its lawyers to prosecute the suit. Technicalities over the $160,000 have at long last reached the U. S. Supreme Court whose rulings in comparable cases have upheld the escheat rights of the States. Spurred by the distant glint of a $34,000 commission on the $160,000, Prospectors Edelman & Creskoff went sluicing up the creeks of other Pennsylvania escheat tributaries. Taking corporations capitalized at above $2,000,000, they analyzed corporation statements and manuals, traced unclaimed dividends, stocks, bonds, interest...
...Escheat. In the contest for Henrietta Garrett's $20,000,000 estate is the State of Pennsylvania, which asserts there are no legal heirs, therefore the fortune must escheat, i.e., revert to the State under intestate laws. Also plugging for the money is Administrator Starr, whose claim that Mrs. Garrett's phrase "Give you" meant he should get all left after paying out $62,500 will be presented in court by former U. S. Senator George Wharton Pepper, a Philadelphia lawyer. Mr. Starr has already received some Garrett snuff money. His brother, the late Isaac Starr, was named...