Questions people ask
What happens to your belongings when you go to prison?
The short answer
Belongings stay wherever they were left, under the control of whoever holds the lease, the storage contract or the keys. The jail or prison decides what a person may keep inside. Everything outside needs a named person, usually an agent under a power of attorney, to look after it.
The longer answer
A sentence does not pause a lease, a storage contract or a car loan. Everything a person owned on the day they went into custody stays where it was, and someone on the outside ends up deciding what becomes of it. Often nobody decides. A lease that goes unpaid ends on the landlord’s terms. A storage unit that goes unpaid is handled under the storage contract, which the renter signed and probably never read.
What a person may take inside is a separate question, and the jail or prison answers it. Each facility sets its own rules on personal property, and a county jail and a state prison can differ. Check with the facility directly, or ask the defense attorney to, before anything is packed for the trip.
Everything else needs two decisions. One is a person: someone with legal authority to act, usually an agent named in a Florida power of attorney. The other is a place, chosen for the length of the sentence rather than the next few months. Papers that prove ownership, such as titles, deeds and passports, belong in that place alongside the jewelry and the watch.
We hold the valuables and papers of people facing a long absence in a 9R-rated vault on Galt Ocean Mile in Fort Lauderdale. Everything that goes in is listed on a signed intake inventory, and the renter keeps a copy. Years later, that list may be the only record of what was there.
Sorting what you own into three piles
Start with a plain list, room by room. Most of it falls into three groups. There are things to sell or give away now, and bulky things that need a storage unit or a relative’s garage. Then there are small things of real value or legal weight. The third group is the shortest, and it is the one that goes missing.
That small group is where a box fits. A wedding band, a grandmother’s brooch, a roll of coins, a car title, a birth certificate, the deed to a house. These are the items that drift out of a spare room over years, usually without anyone meaning harm. A box with us starts at $795 a year for the smallest size, and a 3-year term takes 20% off each year’s rent. All eight sizes are on boxes and prices.
If any of it may be part of the case, as evidence or as property a court could order paid toward restitution, stop there. Ask the attorney before anything is moved. We honor valid warrants, subpoenas and court orders, so a box is no place for something the court may want to see. The one-page client checklist has the rest of the preparation in order.