(Part 1 of 2)

The bottom slice of bread in the Dakota sandwich is recognized as the home to the monument Mt. Rushmore, but South Dakota is holding something just as valuable but much less known. The Office of the State Treasurer currently holds tens of millions of dollars in South Dakota unclaimed money that belongs to people living in the state. With one of the lowest state populations in the nation, South Dakota residents have excellent odds of locating cash owed to them, if they learn where they should look.

Increased attempts by the state to reunite lost money with the actual owners have led to the giving back of approximately $2.2 million each year in recent years, but most of it still doesn't get returned, because an average of $6.7 million is turned over to the state every year. This essentially means that the state's fund grows by about $5 million each year. So even though the State Treasurer lists no solid total, it is reasonable to assume that they're holding in excess of tens of millions.

Upon first hearing about unclaimed property, the big question many people have is – How could people possibly abandon that amount of cash? There are a variety of reasons, but believe it or not there actually are tens of billions up for grabs across the nation. Most of the time, though, it is as simple as not providing everyone with the right forwarding address. Once a check of some type is sent back to a property holder, or a holder simply loses contact with the rightful owner, it begins a "dormancy period". The dormancy period is a period of time which must pass before the cash is determined to be abandoned or "unclaimed", and then passed along to the state for holding purposes.

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

(to be continued)

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State gives owners of unclaimed property a chance to retrieve it
Hundreds of folks with unclaimed money – old bank accounts, overlooked stock shares, forgotten refunds – are getting a chance to retrieve it without going through state government.

Area towns get share of state's unclaimed property
Local towns are among the 124 municipalities receiving a share of the unclaimed property money from the State Treasurer's Office.

Mass. treasurer says unclaimed monetary property is available
For local municipalities, it’s the equivalent of finding money in the pocket of a forgotten pair of pants. State Treasurer Steven Grossman announced Thursday that his office’s Unclaimed Property Division returned nearly $425,000 in unclaimed monetary property owned by 124 cities and towns, including most of the communities in the Fall River area.

North Carolina Works Hard to Return

California helps owners of
Hundreds of folks with