When a family member dies, the relatives rarely know about their finances. That’s why there are millions of bank accounts in Germany that hold assets. This is how you can find out whether there are any missing sums of money in your family.
If there is an inheritance, the survivors often have many unanswered questions, because the financial circumstances are not always transparent. This is also reflected in the large number of “dormant accounts” in Germany.
According to estimates, between 2 and 9 million euros are stored on it. Sparkasse Dortmund alone managed around 250,000 such accounts with a total balance of 4.7 million euros in September 2019. This is reported by the blog Finanztip.
But how do you find out whether you might still be entitled to money from an inheritance? And what is the legal situation in Germany? We explain what you need to do to find unknown accounts.
In Germany, financial institutions are obliged to keep and pay out assets, even decades after the last account movement.
According to the tax office, the money only has to be booked out and taxed as profit after 30 years. If heirs report themselves after this time and can credibly prove the claim, the bank must still pay out the sum.
The assets do not expire, except that account management fees continue to be debited and the balance is thus reduced.
In Germany it is relatively difficult to find such “dormant accounts”. You have to go to all sorts of banks and do the research yourself, because the institutes don’t do anything like that – after all, it’s for their own benefit.
Note that this process may also incur fees, as the research also involves a certain amount of work for the banks.
It is also possible that the deceased placed their assets in a neighboring country. Therefore, it could also be worth looking at other countries:
Incidentally, in Great Britain, lost money goes to a non-profit development bank after 15 years and is used for social purposes. However, citizens can also very easily track down bank accounts there free of charge via the central web register My Lost Account.
