Help finding out if someone still resides in property/is still alive

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Hi, Hoping for some pointers/advice here please as we have no legal knowledge at all. Brief as I can: My FIL died 23 years ago. He was married for 40 years to my lovely MIL who died and a year later, he married someone else but it was very short lived and they soon separated but didn't divorce. He became very unwell and moved out of the family home to a flat and his new wife stayed in the family which was paid for in full years beforehand. Before his death he realised he had married in grief, didn't even like his new wife and changed his will to leave everything to his 2 sons (one my DH). On the advice of the solicitor at the time, my husband and his brother agreed to let the new wife stay in the property as by law she owned half. We checked recently and all 3 names are on the land registry. There has been no contact with the new wife (she was fairly abhorrent after the death and we received numerous aggressive letters from her solicitor advising DH to sign various documents and threatening legal action and at the time we were a young family and quite anxious as well as dealing with the grief of FIL). She lives 500 miles away so we have no idea if she is still alive. If she is alive, she must be almost 90. My question is, how do we find out if she is still alive and where would the house deeds be held. Do we contact the solicitor who dealt with our side of things at the time (they are also 500 miles away) and will they have the house deeds? When I looked at their website, they charge £300/hour so if there's an alternative means of finding this out, I'd be really grateful to know how. TIA

You don't need the deeds to the house to confirm ownership. The Land Registry record is definitive. The deeds only help if they hold additional information, e.g. legal boundaries or previous owners.

You can carry out an online search of records up to 2021 through the General Register Office. You can also try a probate search at the probate registry, which would help if she has died more recently and probate has been obtained.

My question is, how do we find out if she is still alive and where would the house deeds be held. Do we contact the solicitor who dealt with our side of things at the time (they are also 500 miles away) and will they have the house deeds?

1. House Deeds

Why do you want the house deeds?

If any mortgage on the house was paid off a long time ago, it is possible that either the solicitors who dealt with the mortgage originally hold the deeds (which may not necessarily be the solicitors you used) OR that the deeds were given to your inlaws when the mortgage ended. Things are done differently now (all electronic) but if it was a long time ago, there would have been paper deeds which are normally held by the solicitors. When the mortgage is paid off, you can if you want have the deeds given to you or you can leave them with the solicitors for safe keeping.

It's obviously worth asking the solicitors. I'm not sure why it's relevant that they are 500 miles away. They are solicitors so they will have a telephone number and an email address!

If you are asking them whether they hold deeds to a property that you/yr husband/brother own, they will answer that. They won't be billing you £300 an hour to answer a basic question about what documents they hold.

2.Is she still living in the house?

The obvious thing to do in the first place is to send someone round to knock on the door and see who is there.

There are lots of different types of professionals you could get to do this from process servers (not that they would be serving legal proceedings) but this is a job they could do, to private investigation agencies to solicitors and so on.

I'm assuming you don't know any neighbours there but do you have any friends/relatives who are closer who could go?

Beyond that, if you are talking about the value of substantial property, I'm guessing it is worth a 500 mile trip yourself. I mean it's not like it's Australia is it?
The Proclaimers would have been there in a moment!

3.Is she still alive?

Start with a basic google search using her name variously first name and surname in inverted commas (so it searches for that exactly) together with her address/location in various permutations; same again with her full name including middle names; same again for both including the words (separately) obituary or funeral. Try this also on local papers/local news website for the areas.

Then as has been suggested you can do a probate search - but this would require her to have people who had applied for probate on her behalf.

Death certificates are public documents so you can search for and obtain copies of these yourself but you will need basic information about the person you are searching for.

https://www.gov.uk/order-copy-birth-death-marriage-certificate

Thanks very much for both replies and the information. We have tried a Google search as you suggested but didn't get any info from that. We know very little about her apart from her name and her approximate age. She cut all contact shortly after death of FIL. A further question if anyone can answer please: if a homeowner dies, who tells the Land Registry and do they have to do this within a certain time frame?

if a homeowner dies, who tells the Land Registry and do they have to do this within a certain time frame?

Well no one will tell the land registry unless they have a reason to do it - so that usually means executors if there is a will or interested parties who stand to inherit if there isn't.

Did this woman have any children or other relatives you are aware of?

. We know very little about her apart from her name and her approximate age.

If they get a copy of the father's marriage certificate, that will have her date of birth on it.

@WigsNGowns

Thank you for taking the time out to reply and give us more insight - it's very much appreciated.

Did this woman have any children or other relatives you are aware of?

She had 3 children. The last time I searched for her online was about 5 years ago and all I could find was a '192' entry of her name and another man who we know nothing about.

We really were totally naive at the time and lack of legal knowledge and funds/geographical distance stopped us looking into things any further. I think we just assumed if she died, we would be informed and would take things from there.

You could try:

https://www.192.com/people/

There is a small fee for detailed information.

192 allows you to search the electoral register. If she's still alive then she should be on there.

You could try a 'free trial' on Ancestry (just remember to cancel before the end of the trial) to see if there is a death record. You could also try to find some of her relatives (children maybe), that you could then look for on 192.com to find their current locations.

Not necessarily. You can opt out of the open register. If you do, your details will not appear on 192 or any other source.

prh47bridge · Today 13:19

NotDavidTennant · Today 11:14

192 allows you to search the electoral register. If she's still alive then she should be on there.
Not necessarily. You can opt out of the open register. If you do, your details will not appear on 192 or any other source.

Exactly what @prh47bridge says. When you complete your electoral register details confirmation, it allows you to opt out of the open register. This means that your details cannot be accessed by data scrappers, advertisers etc.

See here:

https://www.gov.uk/electoral-register/opt-out-of-the-open-register

There are two versions then of the electoral register the 'full register' (everyone) and the 'open register' (only those people who have not opted out of inclusion in the open register).

That said:

1. Plenty of people don't opt out because they aren't savvy enough or aren't aware of what it means or don't care. I would have thought older people are less likely to have opted out as it was a new thing and really is to do with avoiding easy access to your personal data in the age of internet.
2. 192 holds old details that pre-date the ability to opt out so it can show addresses and other info about who was living there.
3. full registers are available to inspect in local libraries etc (varies from LA to LA) but you would need to physically go there. See for example this about access in Kensington

https://www.rbkc.gov.uk/council-councillors-and-democracy/local-democracy-and-elections/registering-vote/public-inspection-full-register-electors

Thanks everyone. We will start researching this week.