Page:Delaware v. Pennsylvania (2023).pdf/15

Rh with how we described the Western Union money orders at issue in our prior escheatment cases. See Pennsylvania, 407 U. S., at 208; Western Union Telegraph Co., 368 U. S., at 72. And the FDA was enacted against the backdrop of the common law as set forth in those cases; indeed, it abrogates the common-law escheatment rules that we adopted in those cases. The statute is naturally read to reflect the same basic conception of the term “money order” that we addressed in those precedents.

The operation of the FDA further confirms the relevance of the prepayment feature of a money order for the purpose of assessing the similarity of the Disputed Instruments. The FDA plainly regulates the escheatment of abandoned financial products, and when financial instruments are prepaid, the likelihood of their abandonment (and thus the potential for escheatment) increases, as the holder of the proceeds of such instruments has possession of the prepaid sums of money if the instruments are never collected or presented for payment. See Pennsylvania, 407 U. S., at 208. Thus, the FDA naturally applies to prepaid instruments, such as money orders, given that those instruments are of a type likely to implicate the FDA’s escheatment rules. And Delaware does not dispute that, just like money orders, the Disputed Instruments are prepaid written financial instruments used to transmit money to intended payees.

Second, the Disputed Instruments are similar to the “money orders” that the FDA targets because they inequitably escheat in the manner that the text of the FDA specifically identifies as warranting statutory intervention. Just as with the money orders in Pennsylvania, the company holding the proceeds of the Disputed Instruments (MoneyGram) does not keep adequate records of creditor addresses as a matter of business practice. And the FDA abrogates this Court’s escheatment precedents on this very basis. See §§2501, 2503. Consequently, the inherent characteristics of money orders are not the only relevant point