A desperate homeless mum died in a shelter unaware she had £600,000 of unclaimed inheritance.
Cathy Boone, 49, passed away after efforts to trace her and hand over the fortune failed.
The mum-of-two, from Oregon, US, was the rightful owner of the money after her mother died in 2016.
But despite newspaper adverts seeking her and the help of a private investigator, she was not traced in time.
Her father Jack Spithall has told KGW News she needed "help in the worst way" at the end of her life.
Ms Boone had been suffering from drug and mental health issues when she passed away while sleeping rough in Astoria, Oregon.
The city's winter temperatures can dip below freezing.
“It just didn’t make any sense to me,” her dad Jack Spithall said in a TV interview.
"That money just sitting there – and she needed help in the worst way.”
Boone grew up in the Portland area and later moved to Astoria, where her mother lived after her parents had separated.
Her $884,407 inheritance money now remains unclaimed in a state bank account after the estate's representatives couldn't locate her.
The funds were moved to the Department of State Lands amid uncertainty over who has claims to them.
“Given a year and a half of effort taken by the personal representative and the attorney for this particular estate, there really isn’t much more that the state could do,” Claudia Ciobanu, a spokesperson for the department said.
“This is a unique case and we sympathise with the family.”
Ms Boone's two biological children and others could potentially have claims to her cash, the station said.
