The lottery world is still surprised with the news of brothers from New York waiting for 6 years to claim their winning. Many people are still wondering why Andy and Nayel Ashkar had to wait for a long time to contend what they could have celebrated years before. They said that the main reason is because Andy was about to get engaged and he wanted to make sure that his girlfriend marry him because of love and not money.

That sounds like a good reason and it is indeed a good thing to wait for a couple of days or weeks to officially claim the winning.  Some lottery winners delay their claims and apparently, there are different reasons why they do not want to claim the prize directly. 

Some of the most common reasons why the lottery winners prefer delaying the claims are:

Publicity

The first reason why lottery jackpots go unclaimed for quite a long time is because the winners do not really want public to know his winning. Most of them are not ready with the overnight popularity that they would get after winning the lottery. They are not ready with the consequences.
Most people have already known how their life would never be the same once public knows about their winning. There will be scams, frauds and many other fraudulent activities from people knowing that somebody is being rich. Even people who were nobody to the winners will say that they are friends, relatives and acquaintances just to get some share of the money.

In addition to that, press will make publication which will even make things worse. The bigger the jackpot is, the bigger publicity will be made. Local, national and even international newspapers will make the winner as the headlines and there will be no privacy anymore. This is the thing that often keeps the lottery winners from claiming their prizes immediately.

Financial Plans

Another reason why some lottery winners do not claim their prize immediately is because they do not know yet what to do with the money. Most lottery winners need to think about it thoroughly so that the money will not just be wasted. Some of the winners of big jackpots also think that it is a good idea to have a financial consultant to help them make the plans. This consultant should be someone experienced in helping the lottery winners with their instant cash so because lottery jackpots need special treatments to make it more useful for the owner.

Annuity or Lump Sum Payments

The next reason why lottery winners delay the claim is because they are perhaps still unsure whether to take the annuity payment or the lump sum payment. It is something confusing to decide because these two kinds of payments will make very different amount of money to take home. The amount of money taken in lump sum payment can be around half of the annuity payment but in annuity payment, winners will need much longer time to get all of the money. It will need long considerations and that is why some winners delay claiming the jackpots.

Bank Account

The last thing that often restrain lottery winners from claiming the lottery right after it is announced is that they usually need to confirm with their bank related to their winning. After the money is taken, there will be a great amount of cash to flow to their account and it should be communicated well, so that the account is ready to receive the transfer.

Those things might be the causes why lottery winners have to wait for a very long time to claim their prize but most of them do it because they are just not ready with the changes that will happen to them after the winning.