Inheritance out of the blue

@MorrisZapp Hi do you mind if I ask a question? I can pm if you’d prefer or ask here if op/nobody minds? Thanks

Yes - my family did - not huge amounts, but the company took 10% - there was a statement clearly showing who got how much.

Assuming your late GP and their siblings were the deceased's nearest living relatives then the inheritance will be split 3 ways between them, as if your GP was still alive. Then your GP's third share will be split between their children, and likewise if any of their children has already died then the grandchildren split their deceased parent's share.

So yes either you or your parent probably are entitled to a share of the estate. You don't lose out because your GP died before their siblings.

Did you actually end up with any money after you paid them? I'm always suspicious these firms are like no win no fee solicitors and leave you with nothing at the end.

The insurance may well be cheaper than the commission.

And yes. It can just be a few clicks on the internet. Like most things it's knowing where to click is the key.

Signing away something before you know how big that something is going to be and before you have attempted to make investigations yourself is stupid IMO.

These people withhold information and use it to justify payment. I wouldn't mind paying someone a reasonable fee for their time and services (daily rate). What I do mind is paying a huge lump of cash out when I have no idea how much work they have put in for it and have not even made cursory investigations myself.

No firm charges 50%. We used to charge 30% before the Internet exploded, these days 20% will usually be the maximum, then downwards depending of closeness of kin eg we won't take 20% of your estranged brothers estate, but we will aim for that if you're a cousin or descended from a cousin. We're an extremely competitive industry and can't just make up fees as we go along. We wouldn't survive.

Because it’s about making sure everyone gets the right amount of money. If you’ve missed a cousin off a child from a first marriage, the money is paid out and this person later appears with a claim, you are the one who pays them. Unless you have indemnity insurance. People seem to think that all these firms do is sit on ancestry clicking a few records and that’s it.

Why would you need to do that ? It is your claim that is the key one. Not everyone elses.

Lets say heir hunters take 50% of the estate and the estate is £1 million.

Alternatively you can find out who died and then approach solicitors privately to act on your behalf, or engage people to do the work on your behalf a lot cheaper than the 50% of your share the heir hunters will charge.

Most of their charges are opportunistic based on retention of information.I would want some evidence that their services are worth the money/return they are getting before signing up to them. Sure they may be doing a lot of work for little return. Or they may be doing next to nothing for a jackpot.

What happened OP? Did you get some money, or is it still ongoing?

As was explained up thread, it’s not just about explaining your link to the deceased is it? It’s about identifying ALL the heirs to the correct legal standard of proof.

Depends I guess on how distant the relative is. Remember the more distant the relative the more likely there will be significant numbers of people to inherit.

Heir hunters do tend to take a significant percentage.

I would do a bit of a trawl first to try to find out who the relative actually was. There are ways of doing this. You can check unclaimed estates for example.

If you cannot find the relative within a few weeks maybe it is worth going back to the heir hunters.

https://www.theprobateservice.org/interstacy-rules-flowchart/

if the deceased has no children it goes to their siblings, if not grandparents, then aunts/uncles, then cousins etc.

I'm a professional heir hunter. We have no way of knowing the size of the estate until the assets are ingathered so it simply isn't possible to trick people by saying it's a small estate. But it is extremely important to manage expectations as lots of people think they're getting a huge windfall when in fact they're sharing fifty k with forty cousins. And you're unlikely to see a penny within two years.

That of course depends on whether there are other cousins

You all need to sign up normally with the company so they have permission to do this. In your case it sounds like the inheritance (which might not be large) would be split between the 3 cousins. The 2 still alive would get a third each and your deceased GP's share would be divided between their children (or grandchildren if parents had also died)

That sounds similar to our case. My (deceased) GMs cousin was the person that died. My GM also had at least one brother still alive. So he got a large proportion as the only surviving cousin, and then descendants of the other cousins got smaller shares. My share was tiny though.

I know this is an old thread but we have been contacted from one of these companies about a cousin of a deceased grandparent who passed in 2017 without a will, the thing is we know the grandparent has 2 siblings that are still alive. So if they claim too will it all go straight to them or would we still be entitled to a percentage? i just don't know if it's worth us claiming when we know there are much closer relatives than us?!

Yh. These sort of companys tend to actively seek people out over relatively minor sums & charge a fee for 'representing' your interest so unless you know the person who's died & who else has been contacted it would be impossible to undercut them & go it alone

My ex FiL got about £8000 this way from his estranged brother. FiL was in a nursing home with dementia so we just let the heir hunter company do all the work and ex MiL shared the money out between the grandchildren.

Yes - it definitely sounded like a DV situation. She was found guilty of manslaughter and spent some time in an institution vs prison. There was a Times article I found where she tried to claim his estate afterwards, unsuccessfully. But I think she did keep the house - which was sold when she moved into a care home about 10 years before she died. It was all fascinating.

We are going through this currently and decided to go with the company that contacted us.

There are potentially a lot of distant relatives involved, some deceased and despite having a family tree on that side, there were gaps (including the deceased), therefore taking on the claim ourselves was not going to be straight forward, lengthy, time consuming and potentially risky. Not knowing the size of the estate also played a part, but it is likely to be modest at the most unless the distant relative was a secret saver/investor and a lot of people would be entitled to a share. We decided that the work involved including having to provide and pay for documentation, as well as indemnity just wasn’t worth the risk of doing it ourselves despite having probably better research experience than average.

My in-laws were contacted, a family member did the claim for them who was also entitled to inherit and they each received £2,000. A nice surprise.

https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/bona-vacantia

If you know the name, find them on here and follow the process if you want to.

This happened to us and we used the company. It was a very distant relative and, despite the money being split between lots of us, my share was enough to buy a very decent car. I don’t remember how big a cut the company took, but the money was a big blessing and arrived within a few months.