Heir hunters

lisyloo

I’m a deputy (court of protection) for a lady (aged 92) whose cousin has died (2019) with no dependents.
we have been contacted by an heir hunters firm over a small estate (suspect maybe a house).
there are 7 aunts/uncles excluding the line that died out and my MIL has 3 siblings (deceased but with descendants), so assuming no lines have died out I think she’s entitled 1/28th I.e. 1/7th share to each aunt/uncle,
i am happy for the heir hunters to do the work and get paid, but if they decide it’s not worth their while when they tot up all the cousins
1) can I pursue this myself (as deputy for the cousin)?
2) how would I go about it?
3) do I claim 1/28th on the assumption none of the other lines have died out? Or would I have to find all the cousins descendants?
the cousin I represent is 92 and the youngest of her siblings so a lot of the cousins will probably have died so the tracing is not easy (3 generations).

Linton

Has the cousin's estate got an executor?  If so it is their responsibility to find all the beneficiaries.  Perhaps it is already in the hands of a solicitor who may have engaged the heir-hunters.

If you want to fill out the family tree you will have to search the records.   Once you know at least one name, a good start for the UK is the Births, Marriages and Deaths (BMD) Index to the registration documents which is readily available to be searched by name on web sites such as ancestry.co.uk up to around (IIRC) 2007. Unfortunately the index usually gives insufficient information to uniquely identify the person being sought.  This is a serious problem if they have a common surname.

You then need to  buy the relevent certificates (for a few £s) to check the details to confirm whether it is the correct person.  The certificate will give further info - eg a death certificate gives the name and address of the person who reported it who could be a relation. A birth certificate will give both parents names and the wife's maiden name. Ancestry.co.uk and several others can be used to search both BMD and other records such as electoral registers.  Of course there is an annual fee of somewhere in the range £100-£200.

Putting together a full family tree can be a very time consuming and difficult job especially as people do things like marry twice, change their names (especially daughters!), move to a different part of the country or abroad etc etc.  And in your case there is the added problem of finding where they live now. This is why professional heir-hunters exist.

I would have thought that the heir-hunters would not give up half way.  They will already have checked that the % of the estate they are researching is large enough to make it worthwhile, and by the time that they have found out how large the family is they will already have done a lot of the work.

lisyloo

Thanks for your reply. I don’t know if there is an executor.
No I don’t want to do all the legwork and don’t have the time.
i was just asking if she could claim the minimum which would be 1/7th x 1/4 without finding all the others (it could be higher if some branches of the tree have died out).
i’ll wait and see what they come up with.

Linton

To make progress you will need to contact the executor. There is a general rule that all beneficiaries must be treated in the same way, so it may not be possible to pay some but not others.

Grumpelstiltskin

Heir Hunters are professionals. If you needed an electrician would you pay one or do the job yourself?
If you know the address of the house a bit of Googling will give you an idea of it's value, but what you don't know is how much money they had in the bank, could be £50 or it could be a million, you never know.

lisyloo

I totally agree and I’m perfectly happy for them to have their cut (and think I said that).
DH said (based on talking to them) that they may decide not to proceed.
she said “small” estate but no idea what that means, just guessing there may be a property, but presumably they wouldn’t be sending letters and phoning if it was 50p each.

barbiedoll

Just a warning; if you decide to use an heir hunter company, do shop around. My brother and I received an inheritance recently. There were 10 beneficiaries, all of whom were entitled to an equal share of the estate. The amounts eventually received, varied between £3000 (by relatives who used a solicitor to claim), and £23,000 (by those who used an heir hunter company) There were even wild differences between the fees charged by competing HH companies. You don’t have to use the one that contacted you, although eventually, you may be contacted by others anyway. I was contacted by 4 different companies, and my brother and I eventually just went for the cheapest. We had no idea how many relatives were left, and so weren’t expecting much anyway. It was a nice surprise when we got the payment!