Pursuing resolution

Funeral Service Times – July 2009
Matthew Siddell

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In over 90 per cent of instances where someone dies leaving an estate but no known heirs, family can be found. Matthew Siddell shares with us some of his knowledge of life after the funeral of those that die intestate – apparently without family...

With more than one in three people dying in the UK failing to leave a will, inevitably some pass with no known next of kin. Under current law, if no one else is prepared to make the necessary arrangements, the local authority has a statutory obligation to either bury or cremate an individual (Section 46 of the Public Health (Control of Diseases) Act 1984). In accordance with the guidelines laid down by the Treasury, this process begins with the local authority making ‘reasonable enquiries to establish that the deceased has not left entitled relatives or a will’. Invariably, this will involve a preliminary property check conducted by either the Police or Environmental Health Officers in the hope of finding documentation that might provide clues about surviving blood relatives or a will. Should it transpire the individual died intestate, and it falls to the local authority to arrange a public health funeral, they must do so in accordance with the deceased’s religion, status and estate, ensuring they keep costs to a minimum if there are insufficient funds in the estate to offset the expenses involved.

For many local authorities cremation is almost always the preferred choice given the cost. Currently, the amount deemed ‘reasonable’ by the Treasury for such a provision is approximately £2,000, compared to that set for a funeral which should not exceed £4,000. Taking priority over all other liabilities, remuneration for funeral expenses is the first charge of an estate and may be retrieved in a number of different ways. Although not standard policy, in the vast majority of cases local authorities seek to recover their costs directly from the deceased’s bank account, upon presentation of a death certificate and the funeral director’s invoice. However, where personal effects have a saleable value local authorities are entitled to sell such items ‘via a local firm of reputable auctioneers’.

If a case has gone this far it will usually require the attention of a genealogist in order to trace those entitled to benefit from the estate. When firms such as Kin initially start a case, one of the first things to do is speak to the neighbours of the deceased to try and establish some positive leads. Often we will be told that there was no family; that no one ever came to visit; that the deceased was never married or previously widowed. Sometimes however the deceased may have had a large circle of friends but no statutory next of kin, as was the case of a well-known artist whose family we traced back to 1834 in order to find beneficiaries of his sizeable estate, worth several million Euros (including 1,500 paintings and 4 properties in Provence). As the deceased was living in France we traced heirs under French law, which meant we were able to go back as far as descendants of the great-grandparents in order to find blood relatives. Under English and Welsh law there would not have been any family entitled to benefit as the rules only permit descendants of the grandparents to benefit from unclaimed estates. This particular search is the subject of a forthcoming Channel 4 documentary due to air this summer.

Using the Internet to look up births, marriages and deaths has never been easier, and there are plenty of sites that allow you to check electoral registers. But with the additional resources of firms such as Kin, we are able to conduct broader searches and pick up leads that would otherwise never be pursued. Each year Kin spends around £100,000 on birth, marriage and death certificates to prove vital events. Searches at register offices all over England and Wales are carried out to enable us to research names such as Smith, Jones, Brown and Taylor. With over 30 genealogists in the UK, coordinated from our head office in Mayfair, the amount of manpower available to us means that we can get through the toughest cases in a matter of days. With the added support of our partners overseas we are able to find family where the local authorities and Bona Vacantia (the process whereby an unclaimed estate will pass to the Crown) have been unsuccessful. Not that they do a bad job, indeed quite the opposite, it is more a question of resources and expertise.

So how do Kin and similar firms make money? When a new instruction is received from a solicitor, we will work with them to find the most suitable fee structure. Either a fixed fee or time charges may be agreed, but more often they will ask us to go ahead and agree terms with the heirs whereby we are paid out of their share of the estate. Working under this structure means the search for next of kin can begin immediately; all that is required is the bare minimum, perhaps just the name and date of death of the deceased.

An international network

Alice Landau died 5th February 2008 in Cricklewood, North London. Her husband, a company director, had died 33 years earlier and Alice’s estate, including the property on Abbey Road, was left in chancery. 6 ½ months after her death, the estate was advertised by the Bona Vacantia and we began to trace heirs. Her maiden name was Sperber and we quickly established that she was born in Vienna in 1916. With the help of our partners in Austria we were able to pick up the search overseas – however, it got complicated very quickly. Alice’s husband was born in Poland 1898 but her parents hailed from the Ukraine, adding to the challenges we already faced. As with many Jewish cases that we become involved in, we realised that the family and forenames had been Anglicised – this is a common problem as people want to blend in to the society they settle in, so Lazarus becomes Laurence, Myer becomes Meredith, and so on. However research was carried out in England, Austria, Israel, the Ukraine, and the US, and thanks to our excellent team, we found the heirs within a week. Kin is now in the process of facilitating the release of the estate from chancery.

A small world

When dealing with as many cases as Kin does, coincidences are bound to appear; take the case of Herbert George Conridge. The family were originally from Germany and moved to London, in the process changing their name from Cohnreich to Conridge. Research was almost complete save for one stem, that of Edgar Louis Cohnriech, who had seemingly disappeared with his wife and four children. We sadly identified the death of one of the children in the early 1900s, but tracking the address on the death certificate in the 1911 census, found that an 'East' family was in residence. On closer inspection we realised that the East family had similarities to the Cohnreich family - same ages, same jobs, some similarities in the names, although Edgar Louis Cohnriech was now 'Frank East'. They were the same family! We traced the family and found possible heirs. One of them, a great-granddaughter, told us that she had been working in a shop in Devon and a customer had signed a cheque as 'Conridge'. She told him that her family were originally Cohnriech's and they discovered they were part of the same family. The man she had met was Herbert George Conridge, and she ultimately received £3,000 from his estate.