Escheat dormancy and deadline check

A $1,875 Illinois vendor check dated 2023-05-20 belongs on the November 1, 2026 holder report, and the due-diligence letter it required was due on September 2 — fifteen days ago. That is the whole job of an accounts payable accountant in escheat season, and it is the part that a dormancy table on a state website will not do for you.

Unclaimed property reporting looks like one number. It is three. The dormancy period tells you when the property is presumed abandoned. The as-of cutoff tells you whether that date made this cycle. The report deadline tells you when the file is due. Miss the middle one and the item is either a year early or a year late, and both are findings.

Work the Illinois example through. The check was issued 2023-05-20. Illinois applies a three-year dormancy period to an uncashed AP check, so the property is presumed abandoned on 2026-05-20. Illinois reports property abandoned as of June 30, so the cutoff test is 2026-05-20 against 2026-06-30: it clears by 41 days. That puts the item on the 2026-11-01 report, not 2027. Illinois requires written owner notice not more than one year and not less than 60 days before filing, for property of $50 or more. Sixty days before 2026-11-01 is 2026-09-02. On 2026-09-17 that window is 15 days closed.

Move the check date six weeks later and it inverts. A California check dated 2023-08-14 reaches dormancy on 2026-08-14. California also uses a June 30 cutoff — and 2026-08-14 misses the June 30, 2026 cutoff by 45 days. The item does not go on the 2026 report. It waits 365 more days for the 2027-11-01 report, and its notice window (California wants the letter not less than 180 days before the report) opens 2026-11-01 and closes 2027-05-05. Six weeks of check date, one full year of reporting cycle.

The states do not agree with each other on any of the three numbers. Delaware runs a five-year dormancy on wages and checking accounts, a December 31 cutoff and a March 1 report date: a Delaware payroll check dated 2021-11-08 is abandoned 2026-11-08, clears the December 31, 2026 cutoff by 53 days, and is due 2027-03-01 with the letter out by 2026-12-31. Texas runs a March 1 cutoff and a July 1 report date and requires no notice below $250: a $310 Texas credit balance dated 2023-04-02 is abandoned 2026-04-02, misses the March 1, 2026 cutoff by 32 days, and waits 365 more days for 2027-07-01.

What a slipped cycle costs is arithmetic you can do on your own file. Delaware assesses 0.5% per month on property reported late, capped at 50% of its value; on a $412,000 aged file that ceiling is $206,000. At a more ordinary 12% per year, one missed 365-day cycle on that same $412,000 is $49,440.

Escheat Deadline Checker is a browser extension and a free web page running the same code. You give it the owner's state, the property type, the check date, the amount, your aged file total and your state's interest rate. It returns the dormancy period applied, the presumed-abandoned date, the cutoff test in a sentence, the report due date, the mail-by date and window for the letter, the days you have left, whether notice is required at that dollar amount, and the one-cycle interest exposure.

All of that is free, in the popup and on the page, with no key, no limit and no watermark. The $60 licence key moves on a different axis: it writes the worked line to a .csv you keep for the escheat workpaper your auditor asks for, and it sets browser alarms on the mail-by date and the report due date. Verify every rule against your state's holder manual before you file — the extension shows its arithmetic so you can.