(Part 2 of 2)

Upon first hearing about unclaimed money, the big question most people have is – How could people possibly abandon that amount of cash? There are a number of reasons, but believe it or not there really are tens of billions waiting to be located across the country. More often than not, though, it's as simple as not notifying everyone of a correct forwarding address. Once a check of some kind is sent back to a property holder, or a holder just loses contact with the rightful owner, it begins a "dormancy period". The dormancy period is a period of time which must go by before the cash is deemed to be "unclaimed" or abandoned, and then handed over to the state for safekeeping.

There are a number of kinds of properties that can become unclaimed money if left dormant for a long enough time period, but the State Treasury's site lists the following as the more common: savings accounts, checking accounts, unpaid wages or commissions, stocks, underlying shares, un-cashed dividends, customer deposits or overpayments, certificates of deposit, credit balances, refunds, money orders, paid-up life insurance policies, un-cashed benefits checks, and gift certificates. Each of these types of accounts has its own unique dormancy period. In South Dakota, these periods range from 1 year to 15 years, depending on what type of asset is being discussed.

While the majority of people are totally clueless about abandoned assets owed to people by the government, a few do know about these funds. But even those that are aware usually have no clue how to correctly locate them and take back what belongs to them. For starters, only a few unclaimed search sites have real records in their databases, and even fewer have remotely recently updated records. With millions being turned over every year, spread across thousands of accounts, the state simply can't update the records in real time, leaving people searching databases that are often very incomplete. This problem is multiplied when we take in to account the varying dormancy periods which means that showing no results one day could be misleading if a certain property isn't due to be handed over to the state for another year, or even a few years.

The best way to ensure all potential lost assets has been located is to learn what professional searchers do to sidestep these, and quite a few other issues, and then use their tips in your own searches.

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