If You Find $43,000 In a 2nd Hand Couch And It's Legally Yours, Do You Still Go Out Of Your Way To Return It To The Old Owners?

NBC2 - A Michigan man said the ottoman for a couch he purchased from a secondhand store always felt a bit uncomfortable, but little did he know that it was because it was stuffed with $43,000 in cash.

Howard Kirby bought the couch and other furniture at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore in Owosso, about 90 miles northwest of Detroit, for $70.

He told MLive.com that he put the piece of furniture in his man cave, but thought something felt off about it.

“The foot cushion always seemed kind of hard,” he told the outlet.

Kirby’s daughter-in-law opened up the piece of furniture to get to the bottom of its weird stuffing and found a box containing just over $43,000 in cash.

Kirby told MLive that his initial reaction was to keep the cash, and he even contacted a lawyer who told him that he had the legal right to hold onto it. But, Kirby’s faith made him look for the original owner of the couch.

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I’m trying to put myself in that position and I think the weight of knowing it’s not my money would weigh on my shoulders forever until I exploded. And we see stories like this a lot, where Person A finds money and returns it to Person B, and everyone applauds them. And then Person A is left with nothing but a good feeling, but without an extra $44,000. That’s a tough pill to swallow, because at the end of the day, the person who found the money did nothing wrong. They acquired that hidden cash legally, and even contacted a lawyer to see if they could keep it. Every inch of the law boils down to “Finders, keepers”.

So all that being said, I’ve gone back and forth on this in my head for a while now. It’s not like they found someone’s wallet in a cab where you obviously return the money. But there’s something about knowing money isn’t yours and then keeping it that would eat away at you. You know how you stay up at night, playing through scenarios in your head about the most mundane, inconsequential things? I’d be doing this every night. From thinking it’s some mob member who is going to track me down and murder me, to thinking some poor family needs this money to pay the bills or they’re going to all die of malaria induced starvation, my anxiety would keep me up sweating every night.

So what’s the solution? You call them up and let them know you found $30k in the couch. Everyone wins. Just kidding I’d probably be too big of a pussy to do that too, but I think it’s a fair solution. Boy am I all over the map with my emotions on this one and it didn’t even happen to me. No wonder they immediately gave it back. I can’t even get through a blog about the topic without losing my marbles, imagine if it happened in real life? Mo money, mo problems.