Often clients ask us how they can find relatives who they either haven’t spoken to for many years or have no idea where they might be living these days. It can be the case that the relatives are long gone.
This occurs when a person is operating as an executor for a family will after someone has died. If you’re a lay person you may not know where to begin your searches.
One good place to start is with a company called Fraser & Fraser who have offices in London, Birmingham and Manchester. They are genealogists and international probate researchers. You’ll pay for their time, but they have a high success rate.
You can find them at http://www.fraserandfraser.com
They will search, through their extensive library, contacts and experience, to find people you believe untraceable. They will go back in family lines to source people who may have different surnames, addresses or even moved countries.
Another source is tracing people is with a company called Title Research. They will also try to find missing people from all over the world.
You can find them at http://www.titleresearch.com
These companies also work the other way around. They will be employed by an estate administrator to find some one mentioned in a will.
The first company tends to get paid by taking a share of a deceased’s estate that would have gone to a certain beneficiary. This means if you’re due an amount from an estate, they will take some of your funds to ensure the funds get to you, if you’re the one who is due when you didn’t even know you were to receive a legacy of some sort. The second company will charge you for it’s time, plus VAT, of course.
It will be worth you trying to trace people yourself by asking older family members for information they have stored away in their ‘grey cells.’ This may lead you to districts you weren’t aware of. You might find someone of the same family surname who may know the person you’re looking for. Just think of how many members of your own distant family you know and their different surnames?
It’s often better to ask a professional company to provide probate services as part of their overall legal document package. A professional executor may have to be paid for, but they may save months and even years from a lay person’s attempt to finalise an estate. Getting the funds quickly to family members is of great use to many a lay person’s executor work and they often employ a probate company to do their work for them. It saves many a late night and many headaches.
LSUK provides a storage facility to ensure documents are kept in a safe location. They’ll also provide an executor service for clients which leads to probate work after a person has died.
Filed under: probate services
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