When distributing an estate, you may often find that one or more beneficiaries are either unknown and /or their whereabouts unknown.
What options are available? There are a number of probate research firms in the UK that can identify and locate missing beneficiaries. The first thing to decide is what information is actually required?
At the simplest end, such as obtaining contact details for known beneficiaries, a fixed fee on a No Success No Fee basis is usually appropriate. Most individuals in the UK can be found within a couple of days but some will take longer. If the electronic searches are unsuccessful we might need to speak with neighbours or family; send out a few speculative letters or follow someone overseas.
If a named Beneficiary has died and you need to find their issue, then a budget fee basis would be more appropriate. Why the difference? It comes down to the information you receive and the checks that have been carried out. It is not good enough to just have the names of a couple of issue if no one has checked to see how many more there could be.
In addition to contact details you would also receive a family tree and documentary evidence linking them to the named beneficiary. Note this does not prove that the person is in line to inherit from the estate you are dealing with, only that they are a beneficiary of the named beneficiary provided.
If you would like the beneficiaries to be proved in line to the deceased then the research has to be conducted from the deceased to each beneficiary, independent of family testimony. However well meaning, in our experience family members do not always know their extended family as well as they think they do.
The document can then be used to obtain Missing Beneficiaries Insurance.
Even if the family are reasonably confident they know all the correct beneficiaries, a solicitor will often recommend a professional report covering all beneficiaries anyway. This is particularly true on larger value estates where the risk to the Executor or administrator is greater.
When obtaining Missing Beneficiaries Insurance the insurer will offer a lower premium (potentially much lower) if the research has been completed professionally as opposed to just being provided by the family. It is as much about checking there is no-one else in line, as it is to confirm the beneficiaries already known.
The research, report and insurance will mitigate the administrator’s risk going forward.
The decision to obtain Missing beneficiaries Insurance ultimately comes down to the value of the estate (maximum potential financial liability) and the view of the Executor. We recently dealt with an estate that was valued around £400,000, under normal circumstances this would be an easy candidate for Insurance however the beneficiaries were the issue of the deceased, three full blood siblings.
The eldest sibling assumed the role of Executor and all 3 siblings were adamant they were the only issue, which was consistent with our research. In this instance the Executor was happy to distribute the estate without Missing Beneficiaries Insurance despite the potential liability.
At TraceInline we help solicitors solve problems like this by providing a professional bounded document, thoroughly researched, including contact details, family tree, documentary evidence and report presented in the form of a statutory declaration.