Page:Delaware v. Pennsylvania (2023).pdf/17

Rh banking and financial organizations and business associations engaged in issuing and selling money orders and traveler’s checks do not, as a matter of business practice, show the last known addresses of purchasers of such instruments.” §2501(1). The operative provision of the statute (§2503) then adopts the precise alternative rule of escheatment that Pennsylvania suggested in the face of inequitable escheatment caused by a company’s business practices.

In short, the FDA’s text provides a solution for the problem of the inequitable distribution of escheats, and that solution expressly eschews requiring entities like Western Union to keep adequate records. See §§2501(5), 2503. Inadequate recordkeeping is thus highly relevant to the interpretive question of when the FDA, rather than the common law, should apply to the escheatment of the intangible property at issue.

It is uncontested that the Disputed Instruments share the inadequate recordkeeping feature of money orders that the FDA identifies. See §2501(1). Therefore, if the common