In some places, it is!

When I was in college, someone kept leaving their car in our driveway, in a spot we had rented to a now-irate third party. The police wouldn’t tow it, but a friendly cop clued me into the procedure for claiming “abandoned” property.

I filled out some paperwork, paid a $10 fee, and the cop came back with some giant “abandoned?!” stickers that he pasted all over the car. If no one called the number on the stickers within 72 hours, the car would be mine.

Alas, at hour 70, a woman came out and started furiously scrubbing away the stickers, so I just missed getting a car. On the plus side, she never parked there again and the rent money from the parking spot covered our cable and propane bill until we moved out.

You still have to keep track of it and keep in mind how much of the total sum is not yours. That is a mental overhead and inconvenience, especially when the alien sum is a significant part of the total.

It does. What if in worst case scenario, you on on hook for something like alimony or fine payment, your accounts are being garnished, n now this unexpected money is also used for those payments??

More importantly to me (OP of this thread here), and of direct relevance to this story, is the fact that the money in question does belong to somebody. Presumably they want it! So me just doing nothing about it already feels bad.

Bad in an inactive kinda way, but nevertheless, something that I, as a good human, should feel sufficiently bad about to warrant my taking action.