Lifestyle

Carole-Anne Never Knew Her Husband Had a Safety Deposit Box. Then a Reporter Found It on a Government List

By Curtis Jones · November 11, 2026

Carole-Anne Wapen thought her late husband, Mitchell, kept careful files. She had been the executor of his estate and had gone through those papers after he died. She had never seen a mention of a safety deposit box.

Then, in 2019, a reporter called.

CBC News in Montreal had found Mitchell’s name on a government register of unclaimed safety deposit boxes. The contents were valued at nearly 15,000 dollars. Revenu Québec, the provincial revenue ministry, had been holding them since 2001, after his former bank lost track of him, about 18 years earlier.

Wapen told CBC she thought it might be a scam. “I was a little bit leery,” she said. “Is someone trying to get money out of me or my credit card?”

It was not a scam. It was CBC reporter Leah Hendry, who had seen his name on the public list and tracked Wapen down. Mitchell had died three years before the story, and he had never mentioned the box.

“Honestly, I could have kicked him in the pants, saying, ‘How could you forget this?’” she told the network, with a chuckle.

In the station’s video she added, “Really, it was like a little gift flying down from the skies.”

She also questioned how the government had missed him. Mitchell had run a Montreal sofa bed company that was listed in the province’s business registry, and the couple had lived at the same address in Saint-Lazare for decades. Wapen said she could not recall anyone from the bank or the government ever contacting them. You can watch the report in CBC News’s video on YouTube.

Revenu Québec told the network it tries to find owners by cross-checking bank information with its own records. In 2019 it said it received the contents of more than 500 unclaimed boxes a year and was overseeing about 1,100 in all. Items worth less than 500 dollars are kept for 10 years, the ministry said. More valuable contents, and documents such as wills or life insurance policies, are kept for 30 years. Things that can be sold are generally sold, and the money is held under the owner’s name.

Wapen had not yet told her two grown children when the story aired. She planned to put the money toward a family trip. “The first thing I’m going to do is kiss the envelope to say, ‘Thank you, hon. Thank you for leaving something,’” she said.

A find like that is not only a Canadian story. In the United States, unclaimed property, including contents from forgotten safe deposit boxes, is turned over to state programs. The National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators says you can search for free through your official state program, and that you should check every state where you, a late spouse or a parent lived or did business. Many states also appear in MissingMoney.com, a free search site NAUPA sponsors.

Quebec has its own Register of Unclaimed Property, which the ministry says you can consult at no charge. Claiming a box there can come with fees; CBC reported a fixed fee for boxes that hold only documents, and an extra percentage of the value for more valuable contents. Official U.S. state searches are free, though each state sets its own claim rules.

After CBC reached her, Wapen began telling friends to ask their partners and families whether a box exists, and she said the question belongs in any talk about an estate. If you are settling a late spouse’s or parent’s affairs, it is a search worth making.

This article is for general information and is not legal or financial advice. Details of the box and its value come from CBC News and from Ms. Wapen’s account in that 2019 report. This article was produced with the assistance of AI and fact-checked against the sources cited by LightWave Reports.