Michigan retention follows the content, not the medium. General correspondence: 2 years. Transitory messages: 30 days. An email that documents a contract, a decision, or a complaint carries that record's schedule instead. Quoted from the official DTMB schedules.
The most common retention question has the most misunderstood answer. Michigan does not have an email rule; it has rules for what records are, and an email is whatever its content makes it. The baseline for ordinary back-and-forth:
DTMB General Schedule #35 (Administrative Records), item 35.102; approved 6/6/2023. Applies to all Michigan public bodies.
DTMB General Schedule #25 (Township Clerks), item 25.101; approved 6/17/2008.
Below that sits the shortest clock in most offices, for messages with no administrative value at all:
DTMB General Schedule #25 (Township Clerks), item 25.102; approved 6/17/2008.
And above it, no ceiling: an email chain that documents a contract negotiation is a contract record (7 years after expiration, under the township schedule). An email that transmits a board decision is part of that decision’s record. The medium never shortens the clock.
The practical discipline is triage, not archiving everything forever. Transitory messages (scheduling, confirmations, FYI forwards) clear in 30 days. General correspondence rides the two-year rule. Substantive emails get filed to the record they document, where the record’s own schedule governs. An email documenting a FOIA response belongs in that request file; one recording a personnel action belongs in the personnel file.
The caveats bind hardest here. Public-business email is generally FOIA-able whatever account it sits in, a pending request freezes everything it covers, and a blanket auto-delete policy that eats substantive records is a violation dressed up as tidiness. The framework for holds and disposal discipline is in our retention guide.
Dekree’s email intake attaches correspondence to the request or record it belongs to automatically, so the substantive messages inherit the right schedule and the inbox stops being the filing system.
Every quote links to the exact page of the official schedule on michigan.gov, and every correspondence series is searchable in our free retention database. Email policy touches FOIA, litigation, and IT at once; confirm yours with your municipal attorney.
There is no single email rule; retention follows what the email documents. General correspondence is kept 2 years (GS #35 item 35.102: date sent or received plus 2 years; the township clerk schedule GS #25 item 25.101 matches). Transitory correspondence, messages with no ongoing administrative value such as scheduling notes, is 30 days under GS #25 item 25.102. But an email that documents a contract, a personnel action, or a board decision is that record, and carries that schedule, which can run years or be permanent.
Generally yes, when they concern public business, regardless of what account they were sent from. An email that exists when a FOIA request covering it arrives must be preserved until the request concludes, even if its retention period has expired. Deleting responsive email mid-request is the classic retention violation.
A blanket auto-delete is risky because the two-year rule covers only general correspondence. Emails that document decisions, agreements, personnel matters, or anything with its own schedule must survive on that schedule. The defensible pattern is filing substantive emails to the record they belong to, letting the general-correspondence rule cover the rest, and suspending deletion for anything under a hold.
This article is educational information for Michigan public bodies, current as of the publication date. It is not legal advice, and statutes and court decisions change. Confirm specifics with your municipal attorney. Statute text: legislature.mi.gov.