Finance Wanted.

By Russ D Johnson

The bottom slice of bread in the Dakota sandwich is well known as the home to Mt. Rushmore, but SD is holding something equally valuably but much less known. The Office of the State Treasurer is currently holding tens of millions of dollars in South Dakota unclaimed money that belongs to residents of the state. With one of the smallest state populations in the nation, SD citizens have very good odds of discovering money owed to them, if they know where to look.

Increased efforts by the state to reunite lost money with the rightful owners have helped give back an average of $2.2 annually in recent years, but the vast majority still goes unreturned, as an average of $6.7 million is turned over to the state each year. This essentially means that the state's fund grows by about $5 million annually. So while the State Treasurer provides no solid total, it's reasonable to assume that they are holding at least tens of millions.

Upon first learning about unclaimed property, the big question most people have is - How could people possibly abandon that much money? There are a variety of reasons, but believe it or not there truly are tens of billions up for grabs 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 sort is returned to an asset holder, or a holder simply loses contact with the owner, it begins a "dormancy period". The dormancy period is a time period which must pass before the monies are determined to be abandoned or "unclaimed", and then handed over to the state for safekeeping.

There are a variety of types of accounts that can become unclaimed funds if left dormant for a long enough period of time, but the State Treasurer's website lists the following as the most 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 account types has it's own unique dormancy period. In South Dakota, these periods range from 1 year to 15 years, depending on what kind of asset is being dealt with.

While most citizens are completely in the dark about missing money owed to people by the government, a few are aware of these funds. But even those that are aware generally have no clue how to properly search for them and take back what belongs to them. For starters, only a few unclaimed search sites have accurate records in their databases, and even fewer have somewhat recently updated records. With millions being turned over each year, spread across thousands of accounts, the state simply can't update the records in real time, leaving people searching listings that are often very incomplete. This problem is multiplied when we factor in the varying dormancy periods which means that getting no results on day might be misleading if a particular asset isn't due to be turned over to the state for another year, or number of years.

Unclaimed money and property expert Russ Johnson has been assisting Americans in finding their unclaimed money online since 1997. His site, http://www.unclaimedmoney.net, is updated regularly and offers guaranteed official searches for South Dakota unclaimed money and missing money across the country.