Concerns over 'Heir Hunting'

In May 2009, Trevor Moore, a 61-year-old IT consultant from Hertfordshire, was alerted to the existence of a hitherto unknown cousin by the approach of a one-man-band probate research company that was looking for potential beneficiaries for an unclaimed estate. Trevor was told it ‘probably wasn’t you’, but this unsolicited communication roused his interest, which only recently had been piqued by chats with an amateur genealogist friend in the pub. In September, a second phone call from one of the largest probate research companies further stirred Trevor’s curiosity. The firm sent an information pack saying that it would track down his missing inheritance for a 20% cut of the estate, excluding VAT and solicitors’ services. ‘But 20% of what?’ asks Trevor. ‘Neither they nor I knew the value of the estate. It seemed ridiculous, particularly if it was something I could do myself.’ Fortunately for Trevor Moore, his wife was a lecturer at the College of Law and a work colleague of Professor Lesley King, the Gazette’s very own probate law specialist.

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