Reputable will search companies?

dawnfrancis

Hi,
Firstly apologies if I am not posting this in the right place, or if the question has already been covered elsewhere - I'm new here.
My aunt died at the end of January.  Myself, my sister and her sister are her only living relatives.  To the best of our knowledge she did not leave a will.  We had joint LPA before she died, and we had to clear out her flat when she moved into a nursing home due to dementia.  No will documents were ever found and we are almost certain she did not leave one.  She only had 2 bank accounts and we estimate her total estate is only about £21k in savings as she had no property.

However to be 100% sure I'd like to do a will search but I'm worried how genuine some of these online companies are?  Does anyone have experience of them and if so are there any to avoid/recommend?

Many thanks
Dawn

Pollycat

There's a dedicated board for 'wills, funerals & probate here:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/categories/deaths-funerals-probate

If you don't get replies here, I'd repost there.

Owain_Moneysaver

If you have access to cheque book stubs or bank statements, you could look for a payment to a solicitor, but you might have to go back years ...  Or just circularise the local solicitors. Most old people would use  a local firm. Even if the firm has closed, another local firm would probably have taken over the files. 

Who else would she be likely to leave money to? If the Will appoints an executor who has died, and leaves money to people who have died, whoever takes on administering the estate is going to have a job finding people who possibly never even knew your aunt. 

Savvy_Sue

Owain_Moneysaver said:

Who else would she be likely to leave money to? If the Will appoints an executor who has died, and leaves money to people who have died, whoever takes on administering the estate is going to have a job finding people who possibly never even knew your aunt. 

It's worth bearing in mind that it's likely to be a lot easier dealing with this as an intestate estate than hunting down a will. If you and your sisters had LPA, and you've moved her into a nursing home and not found a will before or since, it doesn't seem very likely she'd have made one. Would she not have mentioned it, for example, when she made the LPAs?

badmemory

It does seem against the norm to have POAs in place but not a will.  It is often the making of a will that triggers the idea of the POA, although if the POAs were triggered by ill health followed by the nursing home that would make a lot of sense.  If a solicitor was used for the POA then to me they would be the first poort of call.

Mojisola

I would check with local solicitors and, if that didn't produce a will, apply to administer the estate as intestate.