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Comment by dns_snek | Hacker News Reader

Fascinating, is there ever a point where this "magic money" legally becomes your property, after a certain amount of time?

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Check with a lawyer, this varies all over the world and you don't want to mess this up. Not only might the money become theirs again, it might become theirs with interest. Though you might be able to charge them storage fees. don't forget that laws change so keep in touch with your lawyers so they notify you when laws changes so you can remain complaint. Make sure you keep record of what the lawyers say as well - if (when?) you mess something up record of trying to do the right thing can work to your favor in court.

I was just a kid at the time, I can't remember what they did with it over time. I do remember it getting pretty large one time and the executives were nervous about this pile of money they didn't know what to do with. The CEO/owner was a very honorable and decent guy though and I have 100% confidence whatever was the RightThing(tm) to do is what he did.

heh 20 something years later and he still takes my calls to listen to my crazy business ideas.

There was a fairly recent case [0] exploring a situation in which the amount of time is 0. In that jurisdiction, if somebody owes you money and pays you money, they aren't entitled for that particular payment to be returned just because it was an "accident".

[0] https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/02/16/busi...

That ruling was overturned on appeal.

https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/citigroup-wins-appeal-ove...

Interesting!

that is a different case. That was a payment on a real debt, just earlier than intended (and due to a mistake).

The top comment was talking about money that wasn't even billed. They don't have any actual service or product it was tied back to. Also if they do have agreements with that insurer (just no payments pending), there is going to be a contract overriding default law which probably covers how to handle mistakes.

The "if they owe you money" is very important here.

The question was obviously referring to money not owed.

Absolutely (hence the low word count, many of which were dedicated to highlighting that distinction). When learning about a topic though, it's helpful to explore surrounding ideas.

In the US, you are supposed to turn it over to the state, and the government holds it for an extremely long time until it's owner claims it.

Also, you're probably not going to win a dispute with a / the state. The USA government stole my money once (bank transfer). It was a rent payment to a landlord with a Muslim-sounding name. I contested it by sending in their form with the case number that they'd provided me.

They responded saying they had no case matching my info. I gave up before investing more time because I thought it was unlikely to end well for the amount of effort I'd have to invest.

I started directly depositing money orders into his account. No problems after that. The USA government profited one month of my rental rate. I nearly got evicted when my rent wasn't delivered. No explanation was ever given to me.

Ah but if you _do_ want to win a dispute with the state, you must not give up when you hit a logical contradiction. The only way out is through.

This isn't "I lose a dispute with the state," it's "I hit a pebble-sized roadblock and immediately gave up."

I'm glad that a month's rent isn't a lot of money to you but this probably shouldn't inform your opinion on how it is to interact with the state.

Depends on the jurisdiction but typically no.

Short answer "it depends." Long answer:

It depends on your jurisdiction, the entities involved, the amount of money involved, and probably more. However, it's not possible to know ahead of time, you'd need to go to court and argue why this entity is being unreasonable in demanding the money be returned.

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