South Dakota Unclaimed Money

The Office of The State Treasurer is in charge of maintaining unclaimed money in South Dakota, until the rightful owners step forward to claim their assets. Those assets may include any of the following:

cash or property like cashiers checks

payroll checks

unclaimed insurance benefits

dormant savings and checking accounts

stocks

unused gift certificates

unclaimed security deposits

found utility deposits

uncashed money orders

mineral royalty payments

safe deposit box contents

securities

credits

court deposits

lost cash dividends

The difficulty in finding these funds can be not knowing exactly where to search, and how often you need to search. The reason being that if the funds haven't exceeded their dormancy period (time which must pass before law requires the state take control of the property), the state won't have a record of them. Additionally the state won't have a record if they simply haven't input the information related to a particular account in to their system.

There are ways to overcome those obstacle, but most web sites won't teach you how.

The state treasury department provides the following facts about unclaimed property in SD:

- Money returned to rightful owners in Fiscal Year 2006 was $2,223,337 and another $2,235,949 in Fiscal Year 2007.
- 5,090 claims were paid in Fiscal Year 2007.
- The largest pay-out to date is over $300,000.
- Total receipts for Fiscal Year 2007 were over $9.8 million. We averaged over $6.7 million a year over the last 4 years.
- South Dakota's Unclaimed Property Law is based on the 1981 Uniform Act and was passed by the legislature during the 1992 session.
- Our largest property is currently over $372,702.75.

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