You’ve Found a Long-Lost CD. Can You Still Get Your Money?

This initially seems like good news: You come across a forgotten certificate of deposit in a file or safe deposit box. It seems like found money, until you learn that your bank has no record of it.

When it comes to old bank accounts like C.D.s, time may not be on your side.

That’s the lesson Janice Coleman, 79 and a retired librarian, learned. She had been sorting through documents during a move and found a $25,000 C.D. that she had opened decades earlier. When she went to cash it, she was told it no longer existed.

That led her on a yearslong quest to find the money, including checking multiple states’ unclaimed property registries, contacting multiple financial regulators and hiring a law firm to help retrieve relevant tax records. But she has had no luck confirming what happened to her C.D., she said, which she opened in 1990 at a bank that another institution later acquired.

“I have tried everything,” Ms. Coleman said. “It’s like a morass.”

Here’s what to consider, if you find records of an old C.D. or bank account that you may have misplaced or forgotten about.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/16/your-money/cd-bank-lost-money.html