Lost 401(k)s

By Attorney Kelly Jesson

If you changed jobs in the last decade (and statistically, you probably did), there is a real chance that a piece of your retirement savings is floating somewhere in financial limbo. And if something happens to you before you track it down, your executor may never find it either.

A landmark report released in September 2025 by Capitalize, a retirement savings platform, in partnership with the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, put numbers to a problem that estate planning attorneys have long seen play out in probate: Americans are losing track of their retirement money at an astonishing increasing rate.[1]  As of July 2025, an estimated $2.1 trillion dollars in 401(k) accounts have been forgotten or left behind by their owners. That’s nearly 25% of all money held in 401(k) plans nationwide!  The average forgotten account balance is $66,691. That is not pocket change.

When a plan administrator cannot locate a participant, the account does not just sit there indefinitely. After a period of attempted contact, administrators may transfer the funds to the state as unclaimed property, a process known as escheatment. At that point, the tax-deferred growth stops, taxes and potential penalties may be withheld, and your heirs are left hunting through state databases to reclaim what should have been a straightforward inheritance.

And that’s if your heirs even find out about it!  This is not a problem of bad intentions. It is a problem of disorganization and assumption. People assume their family knows. They assume the accounts are obvious. They assume it will all work itself out. It often does not.

The legal reality is that your executor has a fiduciary duty to identify and gather all assets of the estate. But your executor can only find what they know to look for. A forgotten 401(k) from a job held in 2007 may never appear on any document they find in your files. Without a comprehensive inventory of your financial life, you are leaving your family to do archaeology instead of administration.

As an added service to our clients, Jesson & Rains can work with our clients to create what we call a “Family Wealth Inventory.”  We ask our clients to upload all of their financial statements, we verify type and title of assets and beneficiary designations, and then we organize it in a way that makes it easy for the family and executor to locate assets when the client passes away.  If a client has a trust, the Family Wealth Inventory also includes detailed instructions for transferring the asset to their trust.  For our Annual Legacy Plan clients, we will keep the Family Wealth Inventory updated every year.

If your loved one has already passed away without a family wealth inventory, here are a few resources available to search for missing assets: 

• Department of Labor Retirement Savings Lost & Found Database: lostandfound.dol.gov 
• UnclaimedRetirementBenefits.com 
• State Unclaimed Property Databases: Each state maintains a free, searchable database. You can search all 50 states at once via MissingMoney.com
• Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation: pbgc.gov.
• Contact the HR or benefits department of any prior employer. If the company has closed, search the DOL's Form 5500 database for the plan administrator's contact information.

If you’re interested in creating and maintaining a Family Wealth Inventory, give Jesson & Rains a call!

[1] The True Cost of Forgotten 401(k) Accounts," Capitalize & Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, September 30, 2025.
​Full report available at hicapitalize.com. Also covered by USA Today, October 2, 2025.