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This photograph is for illustration purposes only.
We protect the identity of everyone we trace.
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A
solicitor who had been instructed in care proceedings for
two children approached us with an intriguing situation.
The children had been placed for adoption,
but their grandmother believed they were beneficiaries of
her mother-in-law’s
Will. The solicitors wanted us to research this story,
before the adoption court hearing – as they believed the size
of the Estate could have a considerable impact on the future
welfare of the children, and that this should be taken into
consideration by the court. Although the grandmother was
vague, a figure of £2 million had been mentioned – a
figure far too large to be ignored.
A complication with this
case was that the grandmother who raised the query could
no longer remember the first-name of her mother-in-law, nor
her date of death. All she could tell us for sure, was that
it was a Mrs Smith. The children’s
grandmother was divorced from their grandfather Robert Smith,
and had no current details for him, other than being able
to inform us that he spent much of the year out of the country.
Furthermore, the court hearing was scheduled to take place
in four weeks time.
Our first step was to identify the marriage of the grandmother
to Robert Smith and order a priority copy of the certificate
(once we had identified the birth in our indexes, we were
able to obtain the full certificate within 24 hours by paying £23).
The information on this certificate allowed us to identify
Robert Smith’s birth - despite the prevalence of births
of boys by that name! His birth certificate provided the
name of his mother as Lilly Anne Smith, as well as her maiden
name. Once we had all this, we were able to identify Lilly
Anne Smith’s death (May 2001) and probate record.
Lilly Anne Smith had left an estate of £341,558,
and a Will which did not include any provisions for her great-grand
children. She did, however, leave £25,000 to each of
her three children. She then left the residue of her estate
to her husband, providing he survived her by 30 days. This
clarified that if the children were indeed adopted, they
would not be losing out on an inheritance by severing the
links to their existing family.
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