Michigan Woman Warns of ‘Loophole’ That Caused Her Bank Account to Disappear

A Michigan woman is warning others after nearly losing $10,000 because one of her bank accounts vanished due to inactivity.

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Holland resident Joy Kooyer says the loophole happened because she had an automatic deposit set up to save money for her son's education and she's advocating for a change in Michigan law to prevent others from experiencing the same misfortune.

What Happened to Joy's Money?

Kooyer tells Grand Rapids TV station WZZM that she set up an automatic deposit into a savings account as a college fund for her 8-year-old son. But she recently got a notification from her local PNC Bank that her automatic deposit had been denied because the account status was invalid.

She checked online and found that the account - which had more than $10,000 in it - was gone.

Puzzled, Kooyer and her husband visited a bank branch where employees finally discovered the root of the problem:

Kooyer's account had been closed due to more than three years of inactivity. The dormant account was then turned over to unclaimed property.

But Wait - Kooyer and her husband had been contributing to the account via automatic deposits. What Happened?

There's a Critical Loophole in Michigan Law

Automatic deposits made to an account do not count as activity. Kooyer learned the hard way that even though she and her husband were making 'automatic' deposits into the account, the account was seen as dormant because there was three years of 'inactivity.'

Kooyer says that she was told by a bank representative that she needs to make a manual deposit or withdrawal at least once every three years.

"You just have to do something like that once every three years to show activity, but I think what needs to happen is there needs to be an amendment to this law that an automatic deposit counts as activity," Kooyer says. “It scares me to put my money in a bank in Michigan, knowing how easily that was gone."

Kooyer has filed a claim to retrieve her money from unclaimed property but says the process is laborious.