Guest Post by Simon Black
During the summer of 1215 in a riverfront meadow near London, some of England’s top barons gathered to confront King John and force him to sign a contract guaranteeing their rights and freedoms.
The contract became known as the Magna Carta. And one of its key provisions (#43) gave the Barons protection against something called ‘escheat’.
In medieval times, ‘escheat’ referred to the property being forcibly passed to the King if its original owner died without heirs.
So if a Baron passed away without a son, his domain would pass by escheat back to the crown.
Over time, kings vastly expanded the use of escheat; anyone convicted of a crime would have their property seized by escheat. Occasionally someone’s son or daughter could be pressed into servitude by escheat.
It was like a medieval version of Civil Asset Forfeiture: the King took whatever he wanted, for any reason, and people had no rights.
By 1215, England’s noblemen were sick and tired of it, and they successfully forced King John to sign the Magna Carta.
Unfortunately for the other 99.9% of England’s population, most of the Magna Carta’s guarantees only applied to Barons and other noblemen.
Plain ole’ regular serfs still had their meager property plundered by the King, and by the noblemen themselves who had just fought to preserve their own rights at the expense of everyone else’s.
So if a feudal serf in England died without an heir, or was convicted of a crime, all his property was escheated to the local Lord, or to the King.
This became such big business in England that the government appointed special agents called ‘escheators’ in every single English county to oversee property confiscation every time someone passed away.
If there was any doubt at all whether or not the deceased had valid heirs, the escheator would seize the property immediately.
Amazingly enough, this ridiculous feudal custom still exists. And not just in England– in many countries around the world.
In just about every state in the Land of the Free, for example, your possessions, real estate, etc. are forfeited to the government if you die without heir.
Even bank accounts that are left dormant for some period of time– usually a few years– can be confiscated by the government.
But this is totally bizarre, because ‘dormant bank account’ rules can be incredibly loose. In many jurisdictions, for example, simply having some savings stashed away in a bank account that doesn’t have any other activity can put your funds at risk of being seized.
They actually still use the same word– escheat. So money in dormant bank accounts is escheated to the state.
To be fair, this practice has been relatively rare… until Covid. But now governments are starting to look at every source of funding they can get their hands on, including the medieval ones.
The British government recently announced that they had “unlocked” £150 million from dormant bank accounts, with cooperation from some of the biggest banks in the UK, all to help fight World War Covid.
And now the UK is looking to expand the practice beyond bank accounts; they’d like to be able to seize unclaimed financial assets (including stocks and bonds), insurance proceeds, and even dormant pension accounts.
As one UK government official put it, “I look forward to the potentially millions more we can unlock for good causes through expanding the Dormant Assets Scheme.”
This is a practice that literally dates back to the feudal system. And it reinforces a simple truth: you don’t really own anything if the government has the authority to take it.
I have no doubt the bureaucrats who came up with this idea have very good intentions.
After all, what nobler cause is there in this bizarre world of ours but to wage an endless crusade against the Coronavirus, no matter the cost?
They’re willing to do whatever it takes, spend whatever it takes, print as much money as it takes, and yes, even confiscate people’s private property, to rid the world of the virus.
This is our new reality: medieval serfdom.
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No surprises here.
Depressed wages , increased taxes direct and indirect while those under the government employment protection continue to get a better deal for wages and benefits especially pensions continue to be paid regardless of the state of underfunding . This has been building up and accelerating for 40 years with a brick wall ahead . See how socialism works for those connected or employed by government while those forced to pay the bill continue to lose ground .
Indentured Servitude is alive and well in America ! I own my property as long as I pay the government rent in the form of property tax .Don’t pay you are out in the street so what do you really own ??
NOTHING
They can cheat you out of your wealth, your honor, and even take your life but the one thing they can’t own is your mind or soul, and even then, THAT has to be given willingly.
If you think “bail-ins”, theft of your retirement savings, or other accounts will never happen in the good old US of A, my reply is MF Global.
Good grief … this ‘writer’ has done a remarkable cranial-rectal inversion … seemingly to create another group of ‘victims’ of the ‘State’ so that there can be more whining and bitching.
As with, for example, adverse possession laws, one of the purposes is to have folks pay attention to their property and their rights to property … sort of an enforced grown-up responsibility.
If a person discovers that property to which he/she is entitled has already escheated to the State, then they make an appropriate claim and the subject property will likely be turned over to them once they prove the necessary items to establish their right to that property.
Good luck trying to get anything back from the state.
As he said, it’s in the U.S. too. I worked for an insurance company in the 1990s and they had to do escheatment accounting on abandoned insurance polices with cash value. After so many years and not being able ton contact the policy owner, the cash value of the policy was turned over to the state government.