Emma McNamara
Tracing Direct Client: Gittins McDonald Solicitors
The Case: Intestate Estate of The Late Jack Hind.
Tracing Direct were instructed to undertake the research and identify any potential beneficiaries to the estate of the Late Jack Hind who died intestate in 2021.
At the time of instruction, there was only very limited information known about the deceased. No further information relating to the birthplace, or any family of the deceased was available.
Tracing Direct proceeded to undertake a comprehensive search to establish the correct birth entry of the deceased, which would then enable Tracing Direct to begin compiling the deceased’s family tree in order to identify the entitled beneficiaries to the estate.
It was discovered that the deceased had been married twice, but there was no issue from either of those marriages. Before any further research could be conducted, Tracing Direct then had to establish if the deceased was divorced from his second wife. As there is no central database available which hold records of a Decree Absolute, proactive research and calls were made to establish if this was the case, it transpired that the deceased had been divorced and a copy of the Decree Absolute was then obtained from the Central Family Court.
Once all groundwork pertaining to the immediate next of kin of the deceased had been established, Tracing Direct’s research then began validating the bloodlines of the deceased and established there were four siblings.
This comprehensive search utilised the extensive research and analysis abilities of the team. The result was an accurate and complete record of the siblings and their descendants.
All four siblings had pre-deceased Jack Hind, but it was identified that through marriage searches of the siblings, that Jack Hind had eleven surviving nephews and nieces.
A complete case file was then compiled and proactive calls were made to inform entitled kin of their estranged uncles passing. Once all the research had been completed, a comprehensive report was compiled supported by all Birth, Death and Marriage certificates for each of the beneficiaries to support their claim.
This report provided a concise document that could be effectively utilised by the practice and contained all the information they would need in preparation to conduct the administration of the estate.
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