Opinion of the Court
(statement of Com. Chairman Sen. Sparkman referring to the insertion of the language as a “minor” change). Thus, that statutory phrase is reasonably viewed as merely clarifying the intended initial scope of coverage (i.e., as an effort to better demarcate the boundaries of a statute that regulates escheatment of “money order[s], traveler’s check[s], [and] other similar written instrument[s],” §2503), rather than as an express exemption that accepts that items of this nature would otherwise qualify for regulation under the terms of the statute and specifically undertakes to carve them out.
In any event, given the history and text of the FDA, it would be strange to interpret the “third party bank check” language to exempt from the statute entire swaths of prepaid financial instruments that are otherwise similar to money orders in that they operate in generally the same fashion and would likewise escheat inequitably pursuant to the common law due to the business practices of the company holding the funds. At the very least, reading the exemption that broadly would imbue “third party bank check” with a meaning that far surpasses a “technical” change. And it would also risk rendering largely ineffectual the FDA’s framework for displacement of the common law, as necessary, to ensure equitable escheatment. *** When a financial product operates like a money order—i.e., when it is a prepaid written instrument used to transmit money to a named payee—and when it would also escheat inequitably solely to the State of incorporation of the company holding the funds under our common-law rules due to recordkeeping gaps, then it is sufficiently “similar” to a money order to fall presumptively within the FDA. Such is the case with the Disputed Instruments. And nothing in the parties’ arguments, the Special Master’s Second Interim Report, or the record in these cases persuades us
