In many legal systems there exists the figure of the third-party beneficiary. This refers to situations in which two persons enter into a contract creating a patrimonial right in favor of a third person who did not participate in the agreement, did not sign it and, in many cases, may not even know of its existence.

The best-known example is life insurance: the person taking out the policy designates beneficiaries who acquire economic rights even before becoming aware of them. But the phenomenon also appears in trusts, retirement plans, payable-on-death accounts, employee benefits, shareholder agreements, conditional gifts and many other modern patrimonial structures.

From the perspective of unclaimed property, this figure is especially interesting because it demonstrates that an asset may be legally linked to a person who is, in practice, completely disconnected from it. The problem, therefore, is not necessarily the absence of an owner, but rather the absence of information, notice or connection between the right and its holder.

In some cases, this disconnection may last for decades, spanning migrations, generational changes or the loss of records, creating patrimonies that remain immobilized simply because no one succeeded in identifying or locating the persons entitled to them.