Talk:Special dividend

Citations Needed
I would like to request some citations be added about special dividends. I am a stock holder of Virnetx corporation that recently announced a "special dividend". There was quite a discussion on the Yahoo message board about the ex dividend date for a special dividend. The significant dates involved were:

On June 15, 2010, the Board of Directors of VirnetX Holding Corporation (NYSE Amex: VHC) (the "Company") approved the   declaration of a one-time special cash dividend of $0.50 per share of the Company's common stock payable on July 15, 2010 to stockholders of record on July 1, 2010.

The Xdiv date was Tuesday August 29th. VHC has never issued a dividend before and the $.50 is < than the 20% requirement stated in the article. the article also states other conditions that might make it a special dividend. There were no citations given that I could see that backup these statements. On the xdiv date the stock traded at the reduce xdiv price indicating it was not a special dividend. Special Dividend does not appear to be a real term. FICA and SEC sites seem to have no mention of the term special dividend. The bone of contention is about when the stock can be sold to collect the dividend. There is almost unanimous agreement that this site is incorrect and that you can always collect the dividend if you are an owner of record on the xdiv date and sell on that date. The site here says that for a special dividend the owner of record on the xdiv date must hold the stock until the payment date to sell the stock before collecting the dividend. Can this be addressed and cleared up. What is the truth and if the site is correct can it provide adequate citations to back up the claim.

Challenging Payment Date Info
I cannot find substantiation of this information anywhere. Monkeyjunky (talk) 11:35, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
 * This says that, although I'm not sure if you can see it without an ex-dividend.com account. I have no personal experience with the special dividend situation it describes. According to http://www.sec.gov/answers/dividen.htm it happens to stock dividends. Art LaPella (talk) 03:21, 13 November 2010 (UTC)