OREGON: After spending five years on the streets and battling drug abuse, a woman, 49, died in a homeless shelter while over Rs137mn of her inheritance money sat unclaimed in a state bank account in Oregon, US.
According to the details, Cathy Boone, 49, died at a shelter on 13th of January last year despite being the heir to over Rs155 million in inheritance money from her mother’s estate.
Her father Jack Spithal said, “It just didn’t make any sense to me. That money just sitting there – and she needed help in the worst way.”
For several years, Boone, who initially grew up in Portland, volunteered at the non-profit Sisters of the Road café before moving to the city of Astoria, where her mother lived, following the divorce of her parents.
However in 2016, following her mother’s death, Boone relapsed into drug abuse and began living on the streets, KGW News reported.
Spithall continued, “She had a rough life but when she was good she was really good.” Boone’s father said he tried to stay connected to his daughter but he was unable to reach her following her relapse.
Representatives of her mother’s estate also tried to contact Boone but were unsuccessful.
Newspaper ads were tried and a private investigator was even hired to trace Boone, but they were unable to find her. As a result, the unclaimed money – $884,407 in total – was transferred to the Department of State Lands, according to KGW.
It is not clear whether Boone was aware that the money was hers or if she knew the correct channels to go through in order to receive it, her father said.
‘Given a year and a half of effort taken by the personal representative and the attorney for this particular estate, there really isn’t much more that the state could do,’ Claudia Ciobanu, a spokesperson for the department, said. ‘This is a unique case and we sympathize with the family.’
