VSTO and Due Dates on Tasks

You'd think that when you create a task that can have a blank due date, it would actually be blank now wouldn't you! Well, this isn't the case!
If you create a task and don't set a due date, the due date is actually set to 1/1/4501! This seems to be a magic date as other values (like DateTime.MaxValue) are shown literally.
This becomes a little cumbersome when you want to store the fact elsewhere.