Governments can take your stocks without your permission. It happens all the time

Here is some investment advice you probably havent heard before: If you own stock, occasionally log in and jiggle the handle. Otherwise, depending on where you live, a state may eventually decide that you have abandoned your investment.

Not because you died. Not because anyone proved you moved away. Not necessarily because your mail was returned. You may still be receiving statements. Your dividends may still be landing automatically in your bank account. You simply havent done anything lately.

That distinction sounds absurd. It is becoming increasingly important.

Over the last few years, states have quietly been rewriting unclaimed-property laws in ways that make securities easier to declare abandoned. The clock has gotten shorter and the definition of "abandoned" has gotten broader.

Computershare, one of the country's largest stock transfer agents, says there was a time when most states waited seven years before treating stock as abandoned. Today, more than half use three years. Even more consequential, states have increasingly shifted from a "lost" standard, such as returned mail, to an "inactivity" standard. Computershare itself calls the trend "unfortunate."

Think about what changed.

Under the old logic, the government was essentially saying: We can't find you. Under the new logic, it can be: You haven't contacted us lately. That is a radically lower bar for taking custody of somebody's investment.

And for the investor who follows the most basic rule of long-term investing, buy good companies and leave them alone, it creates a bizarre trap. Computershare warns investors that merely receiving statements or having dividends automatically deposited may not qualify as sufficient activity under some state laws.

In other words, the financial system may know exactly where your dividends go but still decide that you have disappeared. Then the machinery starts.

Your brokerage firm or transfer agent identifies the account as approaching dormancy. Notices go out. If the right kind of response doesn't arrive, the securities can be transferred to the state as unclaimed property.

And then something far more consequential can happen. The state can sell your stock.

Ask Jan Peters. Peters is a German citizen who worked for Amazon and owned 1,029 Amazon shares before the company's 20-for-1 stock split. California ended up with his shares even though Peters lived in Munich, Germany. His Supreme Court petition says his address had somehow become, "Munich, CA 00000."

California sold the Amazon stock for about $1.6 million. By June 2025, Peters calculated that those same shares would have been worth more than $4.2 million. He eventually received the sale proceeds. He did not receive the Amazon investment he had owned or its subsequent appreciation. His challenge ultimately reached the Supreme Court, which declined to hear it in October 2025.

From the state's perspective, Peters' abandoned property had been processed. From his perspective, roughly $2.6 million of investment appreciation was gone.

That raises an obvious question. Why are states making it easier for investments to enter this system? The official answer is consumer protection.

States argue, with some justification, that unclaimed-property programs act as a giant lost-and-found. Instead of leaving forgotten assets with banks