(Part 1 of 2)

The southernmost of the Dakotas may be home to the national treasure that is Mt. Rushmore, but ND is holding its own treasure that's deserving of as much attention. According to the web site of the State Land Department, there are currently over 23 million dollars 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 getting between these people and their cash, beyond knowledge of the fact that these assets exist, is the knowledge of how to find them and reclaim them.

N. Dakota Residents are blessed to reside in a state that is among the top five 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 ND citizens have great chances of discovering and taking back money that is rightfully theirs.

The main rule of looking for unclaimed money is to search regularly. One of the biggest mistakes searchers generally make is to search only once on the first web site they see that has a search box and they end their search there. This does not factor in that the vast majority of forgotten funds web sites don't have accurate data, and even the official state listings are often slow to be updated. This is a problem, not only due to the fact that someone in a state office has to manually input the record once it's been given to the state, but because there are varying time periods which must pass, specific to each kind 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. The majority of these have dormancy periods of 1-5 years, which means that if it's only been a year or two when a person searches; they would not find a listing for an asset that has a dormancy period of three or more years.

(to be continued)

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