Issue in relation to grandparents’ estate - possible compensation

[IWonderWhatItCouldBe]

I’ve received a letter from a solicitor acting on behalf of a bank, in relation to the estates of my grandparents, who died almost 20 years ago.

The letter says that ‘a potential issue may have arisen’ in relation to their estates, ‘that may result in compensation becoming payable’.

They died within a week of each other, intestate. I am estranged from my father (their son) due to domestic violence - he lived with them, and I hadn’t seen them for almost ten years before they died.

I don’t know how these solicitors got my married name or address. My father doesn’t know these details, so it can’t be him that passed that information on to the solicitors.

The bank they’re acting for is the same as my bank.

I’ve needed to confirm my grandparents’ address and my date of birth in order for the solicitor to discuss any further with me. But I got an automated message that they’re out of the office till Tuesday, and I’m going mad wondering what this is all about, what the potential issue is, how they tracked me down etc!

Anyone have any experience of this sort of situation? I’m wondering about the term ‘compensation’ in relation to the mysterious issue with their estates. If there’s a bank account with money in it, wouldn’t that be distributed to my father as next of kin? Unless he’s also died…But they died almost 20 years ago, would their assets have been dealt with by now?

All so curious!

That’s my point, the person/people who picked up the error had integrity and are likely to be fair.

How wonderful to have an unexpected windfall.
Hope it's a 6 figure sum !

I too was heir hunted. A solicitor in Wales got in touch with me. This was about 10 years ago. My Aunt remembered being told the story.
What happened was my Great grandfather had bought a house for his daughter as her husband, home from WW1, had PTSD and was very unstable. He later committed suicide by drowning in the river near Abergavenny. So his widow lived in the house with her daughter, then the daughter's daughter lived there, then the son...So son and his wife wanted to sell the house and discovered that it was owned by GG, who had long passed away. Using the firm on TV the solicitor tracked down the heirs and we each passed on any info we knew about our family.
In the end we all got £1400 !
But best of all we got paper work with info and names of our relatives dating from 1895. Such a sad story though.
It was Fascinating stuff.