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DELAWARE v. PENNSYLVANIA
common law. The FDA provides that “a money order … or other similar written instrument (other than a third party bank check)” should generally escheat to “the State in which such … instrument was purchased.” 12 U. S. C. §2503. This Court consolidated the actions and appointed a Special Master. In his initial report, the Special Master concluded that the Disputed Instruments were covered by the FDA. Following oral argument in this Court, he reassessed that decision and issued a second report, concluding that many of the Disputed Instruments were or could be “third party bank check[s],” which are excluded from the FDA and would generally escheat to Delaware under the circumstances.
Held: The Disputed Instruments are sufficiently “similar” to a money order to fall within the FDA. Pp. 9–23.
(a) The parties disagree whether the Disputed Instruments qualify as “money order[s]” or “other similar written instrument[s] (other than a third party bank check)” under §2503. Because a finding that the Disputed Instruments are similar to money orders would be sufficient to bring the Disputed Instruments within §2503’s reach, the Court need not decide whether they actually are money orders. Instead, the Court concludes that the Disputed Instruments are sufficiently “similar” to money orders so as to fall within the “other similar written instrument” category of the FDA. Pp. 9–16.
(1) The Disputed Instruments share two relevant similarities with money orders. First, they are similar in function and operation. Although the FDA does not define “money order,” a variety of dictionary definitions contemporaneous with the Act’s passage universally define a “money order” as a prepaid financial instrument used to transmit a specified amount of money to a named payee. And this Court’s common-law precedents—the backdrop against which the FDA was enacted—are in accord with that definition. In addition, the features that money orders share with the Disputed Instruments, e.g., the fact that they are prepaid, make them likely to escheat, and thus implicate the FDA in the first place.
Second, due to the recordkeeping practices of the entity issuing and holding on to the prepaid funds, abandoned money orders and the Disputed Instruments both escheat inequitably under the Court’s common-law rules. The FDA was passed to abrogate this Court’s common-law precedents precisely because, for certain instruments like money orders, the entities selling such products often did not keep adequate records of creditor address information as a matter of business practice, which meant that the common law’s secondary rule mandating escheatment to the State of incorporation always applied. The FDA prevents this “windfall” to the State of incorporation by instead adopting a place-of-purchase escheatment rule that distributes escheats “as
