Delaware Is Sending VDA Invitations — Here's What You Need to Know

Delaware began issuing VDA program invitations on or around August 14, 2026. Recipients have 90 days to respond.

It doesn't look like much. A letter from the Delaware Secretary of State, often addressed to a corporate officer at a registered agent's office. No red banner. No “URGENT” stamp. It is, however, one of the most consequential pieces of correspondence a Delaware-incorporated company can receive — and as of last week, a new round is in the mail.

The Delaware Abandoned and Unclaimed Property Voluntary Disclosure Agreement Program has been issuing invitations on or around August 14, 2026. If your company receives one, the response window is 90 days.

Ninety days to decide how you want to deal with what may be years of unreported unclaimed property liability.

Two paths, very different outcomes

The VDA invitation presents a fork. Companies can enroll in the program or they can do nothing. There is no third option, and the consequences of each are not symmetric.

Enroll in the VDA and the company conducts a self-directed review. The state abates penalties and interest. The company controls the pace, the methodology, and the narrative — within the program's guidelines and deadlines, but fundamentally on its own terms.

Ignore the letter — or miss it entirely — and Delaware may refer the company for an unclaimed property examination. Audits are conducted by third-party contract auditors. Interest is mandatory. The timeline stretches. The company responds to document requests rather than directing the process.

The VDA is not a painless exercise. It is a real project with real deadlines. But it is a project the company runs, and that distinction matters enormously in practice.

Why Delaware, specifically, demands attention

Delaware is not just another state on the compliance calendar. Because of the way unclaimed property priority rules work, property with no valid owner address in the holder's records escheats to the holder's state of incorporation. More than a million business entities are incorporated in Delaware. For most of them, Delaware is the default destination for any property where owner records are incomplete — regardless of where the company operates, where the owner lives, or where the transaction occurred.

That structural fact makes Delaware exposure disproportionate to most companies' expectations.

The questions to answer before the 90 days run out

Not every company that receives a VDA invitation has the same risk profile. But every company needs to answer the same set of questions quickly enough to make an informed decision before the window closes.

Where are you incorporated? Not just the parent — every subsidiary, every operating entity. The VDA invitation may arrive addressed to one entity, but the real exposure might sit in another. Understanding the full corporate family's relationship to Delaware is step one.

What came in through M&A? Unclaimed property liability follows the entity, not the deal. If the company acquired businesses over the past decade-plus, it may have inherited unreported obligations that were never quantified in diligence.

Can you produce the records? The lookback period is generally around 15 years. Companies with clean, accessible data for that span are in a strong position. Companies without it face the risk of estimation — where the state extrapolates from available data to fill gaps. Estimated liability is almost always larger than actual liability, and it is far harder to challenge.

What kinds of property does the business generate? The obvious categories — uncashed checks, outstanding payables, stale credits — are just the starting point. Depending on the industry, the list can extend to customer deposits, rebates, suspended transactions, equity-related property, insurance proceeds, and more. A narrow view of property types is one of the most common sources of underestimated exposure.

What does your compliance history look like? Companies that have filed Delaware reports consistently, even imperfectly, are in a materially different position than companies that have never filed or that stopped filing years ago. Knowing where you stand makes the VDA conversation more productive and the self-review more defensible.

Do you have the people to do this? A VDA requires pulling historical data, reconciling it across systems, applying the correct dormancy periods, conducting due diligence, and assembling a submission the state will accept. That takes dedicated time from people who understand unclaimed property. If the internal bandwidth or expertise isn't there, the 90-day clock becomes very tight very fast.

The real risk is not the letter — it's the delay

Most companies that end up in a difficult audit posture did not consciously choose it. They missed the letter. Or they saw it and routed it to someone who didn't recognize its significance. Or they recognized it but couldn't mobilize a response in 90 days because they had no baseline understanding of their exposure.

The most valuable thing a company can do right now — whether or not an invitation has arrived yet — is develop a clear picture of its unclaimed property position in Delaware. That picture informs every subsequent decision: whether to enroll, how to scope the self-review, what resources to allocate, and what the realistic range of liability looks like.

How Advisely helps

We work with companies at every stage of this process — from the initial exposure assessment before a VDA invitation arrives, through enrollment, self-review execution, and final submission. Our role is to help clients make informed decisions quickly and to handle the technical work of quantifying and resolving unclaimed property obligations within the program's deadlines.

If a letter has arrived, or if you're Delaware-incorporated and want to understand your position before one does, reach out. The clock is already running for this round.