State Treasurer Sounds Alarm About Americans’ Retirement Money ‘Lost In The Either’

More than $1 billion in retirement checks owed to Americans are sitting unclaimed as state financial officials push President Donald Trump to overhaul how the government handles the lost money, North Dakota Treasurer Tom Beadle told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Beadle joined financial officers from 18 other states in urging Trump to give states unclaimed-property programs a larger role in returning retirement benefits to people who cannot be located or who never cash checks sent by their retirement plans. The officials argued states were better equipped to track down owners than the current system, which can leave retirement money sitting with financial institutions for years.

“We’re talking about over a billion dollars in uncashed retirement checks that are sitting out there,” Beadle told the DCNF. “And that number is growing by about $100 million a year.”

The problem can arise when a retiree moves, changes an address or otherwise loses contact with the company administering a retirement plan. A retirement plan may send a distribution check to the address it has on file, but if the recipient never receives or cashes it, the money can remain outstanding.

The Department of Labor acknowledges retirement plans can lose track of people because of outdated contact information and incomplete records. Since 2017, the department’s enforcement efforts have recovered more than $7 billion in retirement benefits for missing participants and beneficiaries.

“What we’re talking about is money that’s already been distributed,” Beadle told the DCNF. “The check’s been cut. It just hasn’t been cashed.”

The Department of Labor announced a policy in January 2025 allowing retirement-plan fiduciaries, under certain conditions, to transfer benefit payments worth $1,000 or less to state unclaimed-property funds when they cannot locate the person owed the money.

The department’s guidance requires participating state programs to maintain searchable databases, permit electronic claims, search for updated addresses and hold the money for its rightful owner without reducing the amount through fees.

Beadle said the $1,000 limit means the policy reaches only a fraction of the missing retirement checks, estimating roughly 28% fall below the threshold.

“The big thing we’re advocating for is remove that $1,000 cap,” Beadle told the DCNF.

State officials argued they already operate systems specifically designed to reunite Americans with forgotten money. North Dakota’s Unclaimed Property Division, for example, returned more than $23 million through 43,653 claims during the state’s 2023-2025 biennium.

The division participates in the States’ Unclaimed Retirement Clearing House, a collaboration involving state treasurers, unclaimed-property administrators and the Department of Labor designed to facilitate state collection of unclaimed private-sector retirement checks, according to the state’s biennial report.

North Dakota has gone further in trying to return other forms of unclaimed money without waiting for residents to find it themselves. A law approved by the state legislature allowed the Department of Trust Lands’ Unclaimed Property Division to automatically return certain single-owner properties worth up to $1,000 after the state verifies the owner’s identity and current address.

The program can simply mail qualifying residents their money without requiring them to first file a claim.

North Dakota’s unclaimed-property program is administered by the Department of Trust Lands rather than Beadle’s office. Land Commissioner Joseph Heringer serves as the state’s unclaimed-property administrator.

The issue could become more pressing as millions of older Americans enter retirement and begin drawing down workplace retirement accounts. The Department of Labor has specifically identified people who reach normal retirement age or the required-minimum-distribution age without claiming benefits as a potential warning sign for retirement plans trying to locate missing participants.

Federal regulators have wrestled with the issue for years. A Labor Department advisory council examined transferring uncashed retirement checks to state programs in 2019 and concluded state unclaimed-property funds have features that may make it more likely missing participants are reunited with their retirement savings.

The Labor Department also launched a federal Retirement Savings Lost and Found database following passage of the SECURE 2.0 Act. The agency said missing participants can go without benefits they earned while retirement plans spend resources attempting to locate them.

Beadle and the other state officials want the Trump administration to build on those efforts by making state programs a more prominent destination for unclaimed retirement payments and expanding the amount that can be transferred.

For Beadle, the proposal is less about creating a new government program than using systems states already operate to get existing money back into retirees’ hands.

“This is their money,” Beadle told the DCNF. “We just want to get it back to them.”