Beneficiary to intestate estate?

Yorkshireman99

barbiedoll wrote: »

I've got even more questions now!

We've been contacted by yet another heir hunter company, this one claims to be acting on behalf of some of the beneficiaries already (11 and counting! :eek:) and "would be delighted" to act on our behalf too.

But....if they're already acting on behalf of the estate and they already know about my brother and I, why do we need to employ their services at all? They'll be getting a cut from those that have signed up and as they know of our existence, and of our right to inherit, will we still get our share? I assume we'll have to provide evidence of our claim (birth certs, proof of I.D. etc) but I don't see why we have to pay them too?

We have been searching the family tree via Ancestry (my brother is already a subscriber after researching the other side of our family) and there are probably going to be a lot of beneficiaries, our grandmother was from a family of 10 children. We're easily able to provide a tree proving our relationship with the deceased, although the heir hunters clearly already have this information.

So I guess my big question is...what to do next?

If you want to make your own claim then you will need to duplicate all the research they have done and provide all the documentation to the BVD. It is not a case of paying them as well. They will not make a claim for you unless you pay and no claim means no money. If they make a claim they will do all the work and provide all the evidence to support it.

getmore4less

You have already said you are too busy to take on the administration so will probably be leaving it to one of the other beneficiaries/let solicitors be appointed anyway

You could wait till someone takes out the grant and pass your claim proof to the administrator, BVD will have no interest at that point.

not sure that your grandmothers family is relevant

The basis for the distribution would be the deceased parents full blood siblings, your dad on your side.
each full blood Aunt uncle gets a share and that is distributed to their children if they have not survived.

11 so far does not mean 1/11 each.

Biggles

barbiedoll wrote: »

We've been quoted fees of between 4-6%, (+ VAT) on an estate worth somewhere between £2-300,000.

We were approached recently too, regarding an estate roughly the same size (though it eventually fell through for us, as a nearer relative had been found!). They do seem to be open to haggling when it comes to the fee and we were confident we could have got it down to 2-2½% by playing one off against another. One even offered a 'price-matching policy'. Let's face it, they've already done the work, it would all be cash to them.

And we came round to thinking that these firms are each seeking to convince us of their 'USP', how they're more professional and how we'd be better off with them. But in fact, once they have 'found' us and the research has been done (and it's being done by all firms in parallel anyway), they have no further part in the process. The probate will be carried out by a solicitor appointed by the 'lead' relative (who would not have been one of us) and the fee taken from the estate, same with any insurance. We decided that, if it went ahead, we should ignore all the nuances and just go with the cheapest firm.

barbiedoll

Biggles wrote: »

We were approached recently too, regarding an estate roughly the same size (though it eventually fell through for us, as a nearer relative had been found!). They do seem to be open to haggling when it comes to the fee and we were confident we could have got it down to 2-2½% by playing one off against another. One even offered a 'price-matching policy'. Let's face it, they've already done the work, it would all be cash to them.

And we came round to thinking that these firms are each seeking to convince us of their 'USP', how they're more professional and how we'd be better off with them. But in fact, once they have 'found' us and the research has been done (and it's being done by all firms in parallel anyway), they have no further part in the process. The probate will be carried out by a solicitor appointed by the 'lead' relative (who would not have been one of us) and the fee taken from the estate, same with any insurance. We decided that, if it went ahead, we should ignore all the nuances and just go with the cheapest firm.

Thank you so much, this is really helpful (not that the other replies weren't!)

We were thinking along the same lines really, as you say, the work has already been done so it's just a case of picking the cheapest (3% currently) and then sitting back and waiting with fingers crossed.

Sorry yours didn't work out....with more relatives than we ever realised, I can see ours going the same way. We had visions of paying off our mortgage. Now I think we'll be lucky if we can pay off the gas bill!