Letter about unclaimed estate - intriguing!

[Cantdecidewhich]

Dp received a letter from France yesterday from a man who says he is a private geanealogist, he said he is not looking for any financial gains it is a pastime.
Anyway the letter goes into great detail about his relatives and places they lived etc. and says that he had a great aunt who died in 1993 with no will and he is entitled to claim her estate in his Mother's name (deceased) and he asks if DP to pursue it with his assistance or appoint a solicitor or do it himself.
Has this happened to anyone else on here?

[cabbageking]

Have you checked for probate?
probatesearch.service.gov.uk/#calendar

[Cantdecidewhich]

Sorry for disappearing, well we emailed him as we thought he deserved to be involved.
He said he doesn't believe it will be a life changing sum but better that Dp gets it than the government, he doesn't think any property was liquidated.
He has sent a sketch of the family tree and told us to email it to the BV website saying he is claiming on behalf of his deceased mother.
Will keep you posted!

[GrimDamnFanjo]

@Cantdecidewhich have you googled the genealogist?

[RaspberryCoulis]

They have to search for all potential heirs using various sources, family trees, personal knowledge, advertise in the papers, and so on. If they missed some heirs and disbursed the funds then they (the disinherited heirs) could potentially sue. They might have a claim not only against the solicitors but also against any heirs who HAD been paid out. The heir hunters company also have to take out a special insurance policy to cover for this eventuality

This is why Heir Hunters are a "thing" rather than people just doing it themselves. It is complicated and anyone who has ever done their own family tree knows how easy it is to get the wrong Thomas Jones or not be able to find a key document for whatever reason. If you get it wrong and upload incorrect information on your own website or tree then it's no biggie, but the courts are a different matter.

It's like anything legal - wills, conveyancing, divorce - yes you can DIY and represent yourself but most people choose to have the experts do it for them.

@Cantdecidewhich do come back and let us know how your DH gets on! Are there many other branches of the family? Or was it just his mother, and one sister?

[sneakysnoopysniper]

If you do sign up with an heir hunters firm it can still take upto to a year before disbursement. Its quite a complex procedure.

They have to search for all potential heirs using various sources, family trees, personal knowledge, advertise in the papers, and so on. If they missed some heirs and disbursed the funds then they (the disinherited heirs) could potentially sue. They might have a claim not only against the solicitors but also against any heirs who HAD been paid out. The heir hunters company also have to take out a special insurance policy to cover for this eventuality

[lyralalala]

@oakleaffy

Scam. An executor of a will would surely instruct solicitors to try to find genuine relatives.
99.999% scam, If you want to be put on a mugs list, go ahead.. these scammers sell emails of gullible people, sadly.

The Bona Vacantia list is an official government site. It's on there, therefore it exists

It's a bit of a shit scam to give the OP's DH all the details he needs to go and claim it himself.

[MorrisZapp]

@Avondklok

My understanding from my heir hunter was they had no clue of value of the estate until they gathered sufficient permission from family members to make a claim. £500 is the minimum to make the list.

This is true, but one main thing we can establish is whether they owned property. We always keep it super vague or else people say 'but YOU SAID it was a hundred grand' etc. I tell people they're getting a bacon roll and a postage stamp, then they're happy if they do get more.

[MorrisZapp]

@dementedma

My friend's brother got one of these and it was genuine. He picked up an inhetitance ftom a very very distant relative

Was it her step brother or half brother? If full blood then there's no intestate succession that wouldn't include them both.

[Avondklok]

My understanding from my heir hunter was they had no clue of value of the estate until they gathered sufficient permission from family members to make a claim. £500 is the minimum to make the list.

[dementedma]

My friend's brother got one of these and it was genuine. He picked up an inhetitance ftom a very very distant relative

[BestIsWest]

OTOH DH and I did our wills this year and it cost us nothing - did it via a charity scheme where we leave a donation to the charities.

[BestIsWest]

Morriszapp you really should do an AMA! How did you get into this? I find it fascinating.

[copperoliver]

Maybe call heir hunters to check. X

[TatianaBis]

@oakleaffy

Wills are only about £300 and there are solicitors who do them cheaply for charity.
Even if one has no children, leave it to a chosen charity. In the scheme of the most modest of estates, £300 is nothing...to ensure it goes to deserving recipients.

DH and I altered our wills this year and it cost £1500. That’s because there are trusts involved etc.

At no point have I said people should not have wills, I’m just explaining why they don’t bother.

[borageforager]

My grandfather was traced & inherited £20k from a distant relative in Scotland, they had common great grandparents IIRC, grandparents had no idea of this man’s existence.

[Russiansilver]

Sounds legitimate to me. I followed up on a lead I was given and we as a family . inherited over £400.000. It was a family member who died without a will or direct line relatives.

[MorrisZapp]

@RaspberryCoulis

Agree, *@MorrisZapp*. I'm always really concerned when people say they've downloaded something or other off the internet and filled it in. A smart lawyer can write wills to adapt for changing situations - we made our will when we had one child, told the lawyer more were planned, so she wrote in a clause about "any further children of our marriage" so we didn't need to go and make new ones.

Is it just English estates you pursue or do you work overseas or in Scotland too?

(You should do a AMA)!

I do Scotland, and my firm work worldwide. Scottish intestate law is slightly kinder because where there are no cousins/ descendants of cousins we can go to second cousins. Bit of a double edged sword though because it takes you a generation back into bigger family sizes and gets ridiculous pretty quickly :) I do love it though.

[mandarinpink]

@oakleaffy

Anyone with any common sense or the most modest of estates leaves a will.
Otherwise it goes to the government.
Outstanding money in U.K. from 1993 sounds very suspicious.
So many graspers out there after” Free money “
Make sure you have a will, if you own property otherwise it will go to government.

Well that's not true either. Property will not go to the government if you don't leave a will in the vast majority of cases. You need to stop spouting nonsense.
And lots of people with common sense don't leave wills for very many reasons.
Honestly, your points are ridiculous gobbledegook.

[Cygne]

We had something like this happen. Apparently there was a will trust set up by my father's great uncle that had to be wound up and distributed to all surviving members of the family as the immediate line had died out, and the solicitors dealing with it employed a tracing agency to trace all the family members. I opened the letter as I had power of attorney and my immediate instinct was to chuck it because I assumed it was either junk mail or a scam - however, the letter referred to a genuine firm of solicitors so I decided it was at least worth checking out. It was all totally kosher, though ultimately not that exciting, as I think my father ended up with around £1K as his share.

[RaspberryCoulis]

Agree, @MorrisZapp. I'm always really concerned when people say they've downloaded something or other off the internet and filled it in. A smart lawyer can write wills to adapt for changing situations - we made our will when we had one child, told the lawyer more were planned, so she wrote in a clause about "any further children of our marriage" so we didn't need to go and make new ones.

Is it just English estates you pursue or do you work overseas or in Scotland too?

(You should do a AMA)!

[MorrisZapp]

Worth mentioning that solicitors will need to see two valid forms of ID before taking instructions from anyone. So it's not just the money, the admin required is beyond the energy/ ability/ motivation of many, many people.

[MorrisZapp]

Quite a few professional heir hunters of my acquaintance don't have wills!

It's important to stress that a will must be valid, not just in existence. If you've divorced since you made it, if your beneficiary has pre deceased, if you failed to sign it correctly etc can result in invalidation.

I feel like a doctor on a coronavirus thread :)

[RaspberryCoulis]

@oakleaffy

Wills are only about £300 and there are solicitors who do them cheaply for charity.
Even if one has no children, leave it to a chosen charity. In the scheme of the most modest of estates, £300 is nothing...to ensure it goes to deserving recipients.

Completely agree. But something like 55% of UK adults don't have a will. They have nothing worth leaving, their family know their wishes, they'll be dead so don't care, they haven't time, they don't trust solicitors... all manner of excuses but mostly it boils down to not wanting to face up to their own mortality.

[oakleaffy]

Wills are only about £300 and there are solicitors who do them cheaply for charity.
Even if one has no children, leave it to a chosen charity. In the scheme of the most modest of estates, £300 is nothing...to ensure it goes to deserving recipients.

[RaspberryCoulis]

But he was tracked down fairly soon after the man had died. I’m not sure how this money has been hanging around since 1993?

Well the person might have died in 1993 but who knows how long it took to wind up the estate? The sum is probably small, uneconomical to trace for larger firms. Or maybe it's a really common surname which strikes horror into the heart of any genealogist - Thomas, Williams, Smith, Jones, Brown. And the aunt was Mary. There are thousands of Mary Browns, you'd have to order all the certificates to disprove.... not worth it, move onto an easier target.

Until some retired expat sitting in his gite in the Dordogne decides he needs a wee hobby to sustain himself through lockdown.