(Part 1 of 2)

The most southern of the Dakotas may be home to the national treasure that is Mt. Rushmore, but North Dakota is holding its own treasure that's nothing to sneeze at. According to the website of the State Land Department, there is currently in excess of $23 million in North Dakota unclaimed money, waiting to be given back to the citizens who lost track of it somewhere along the way. The primary thing standing between these citizens and their cash, beyond knowledge of the existence of these assets, is the know-how to track them down and reclaim them.

N. Dakota Residents are lucky to live in a state that ranks among the top 5 in the nation for percentage of unclaimed money given back to residents. At the same time, the state has one of the smallest populations in the nation, at a little more than 640,000. What this means is that North Dakota citizens have excellent odds of discovering and taking back money that is rightfully theirs.

The main rule of looking for unclaimed money is to search often. One of the biggest mistakes people often make is to search just once on the first website they come to that has a search box and end their search there. This doesn't take in to consideration that the vast majority of forgotten funds sites don't have accurate data, and even the official state listings are often not quick to be updated. This is a problem, not only due to the fact that someone in a state office has to physically input the listing once it has been handed to the state, but because there are varying periods of time which must go by, specific to each type of abandoned asset, before they are handed over to the state.

Some of the most common types of forgotten funds are dormant savings and checking accounts, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, refunds, wages, payroll, salary, money orders, paid-up life insurance policies, deposits, commissions, uncashed checks, death benefits, dividends, insurance payments, and others. Most of these have dormancy periods of 1-5 years, which means that if it has only been 1 or 2 years when a person searches; they wouldn't find a record for an asset that has a dormancy period of 3 or more years.

(to be continued)

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