Unidentified Client Funds Go to IOLTA Committee, Mass. Court Says

Lawyers in Massachusetts with untraceable money in their client trust accounts will have to transfer it to the state IOLTA committee, after the state’s highest court ruled that the money doesn’t qualify as abandoned funds for the state treasury.

The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts said Thursday that it respects “the legislative purpose that all abandoned property be transferred to the general fund.” But the court said that confidentiality was an overriding concern if someone claims an interest in such property, and that the Interest on Lawyers’ Trust Account option was “more protective of the confidential information.”

In ruling so, ...