Even when there's no will, there's still a way

Nic Cicutti
The Observer – 14/06/09

 Click here to view the original article

Heir hunters race against time - and each other - to find beneficiaries of a deceased person's estate and secure their finder's fee. Nic Cicutti reports.

It could almost be a plot straight out of a Charles Dickens novel. One minute you are leading your normal, everyday life, the next minute a letter drops through your front door, saying you have inherited part of an estate from a distant relative you've probably never even heard of.

For thousands of people every year, this is not fiction. The letters they receive may come either from solicitors handling the deceased person's estate, or from heir hunters, who specialise in tracking down missing family members.

An estimated annual £85m is shared out this way, from the 300,000 estates where the deceased dies without leaving a will. Although the typical sums involved are not large, for a few individuals they can run to hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Along the way, they may come into contact with one or more of several dozen teams of professional probate genealogists - the heir hunters - whose livelihood depends on being able to hunt down survivors of the deceased's family and sign them up quickly to maximise any commission-earning potential.

The largest, Fraser & Fraser, founded in the 1920s and still family owned, has more than 50 staff, plus former police officers tasked with obtaining any birth or other personal details of potential inheritors at a moment's notice. Neil Fraser, a partner in the firm, says: "We have access to information and skills that can save solicitors many hours in tracing individuals."

Other hunters include Kin, a London firm with 30 staff plus its own network of former CID officers. Kin lays claim to reuniting several million pounds a year with legitimate owners.

For those contacted, the experience can be unsettling at first. Caroline Clayton, a social worker in Hampshire, was contacted recently by Kin. "The letter freaked me out a bit, " she says.

"They had all my personal details so my first thought was that this was a scam. I rang my sister Ann and when I discovered she hadn't received a letter, I became more suspicious. In the end I did call and they seemed genuine."

In their case, a distant relation has left an estate worth about £70,000. However, solicitors' fees and the 15% commission payable to Kin for tracing them, means the amount they and their other relatives will inherit is likely to run to a few thousand pounds each, at most.

Matthew Siddell, managing director at Kin, says most of his firm's business comes from solicitors trying to track down surviving next of kin on behalf of local authorities, who want to find out who has inherited estate. However, about 15% of Kin's work involves trawling through lists published each week by a special division in the Treasury Solicitor's office. The unit is Bona Vacantia, the legal name for ownerless property that passes to the Crown.

Professional genealogists such as Kin, Fraser & Fraser and other firms that operate in the sector pick out cases where an estate may be worth significant amounts and then go hunting for surviving relatives.

Payouts are based on a strict order set out by law, with the surviving spouse first in line, followed by any children or their descendents, then the parents, brothers and sisters, half-brothers, grandparents, aunts and uncles and - if no one can be traced - the Crown.

One drawback is that the system is unregulated and relies on the integrity of the individual firm doing the background research. Siddell accepts this can be a problem, but adds: "We do operate mostly under the control of solicitors who are themselves regulated by the Law Society."

Meanwhile Clayton, and other beneficiaries like her, are set to enjoy windfalls they would otherwise have known nothing about. "The amount we receive won't be life-changing but it will be interesting to learn more about our family history," she says.

"You think you know all about your ancestors, so when something like this happens it is very intriguing."