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We were contacted by one of our American agents with a specific
request to find a Mr Hank, a named trust beneficiary who
was entitled to $35,000, but whose current whereabouts were
unknown. They believed he was in Sweden in 1982 and needed
to locate him.
After a month of research we had located him at his wife’s address.
It transpired that this was not his current address but that mail was
being forwarded to him. He had not made his current address public but
did confirm that he had received our correspondence and that he was the
person we were looking for.
From here on, we met obstacle after obstacle. From the outset it was
evident that Mr Hank had no intention of disclosing his actual address
to us, and would only communicate via email. Replies were always unforthcoming;
this was compounded by Mr Hank’s endless number of international
trips.
He was estranged from his family, and did not want them to have his details.
This put us in a difficult position, because Mr Hank’s only priority
was to keep his distance from his family, showing little concern for his
entitlement. At many times it looked as if we would have to resign ourselves
to closing the case. The notarised copies of documents required by the
American courts and the Affidavit with his date of birth and information
about his identity failed to arrive at our offices – despite Mr
Hank’s claims that he had sent them by international registered
post. A second time he claimed to have sent them, and again they did not
arrive; he assured us that he had lost the post office receipt with the
relevant reference number “by total coincidence”.
The crux of our job in this case turns out not to have been the research,
but to have carried out a role as an independent intermediary. We found
a way to earn his trust, and to find out which documents he would feel
comfortable in providing. There remained, however, a gap. We could prove
he was called Mr Hank. Separate documentation could prove that a Mr Hank
was entitled to a share in the trust, had moved to Sweden and was still
living there. But without disclosing his address, we still needed documentation
to show that the Mr Hank we had found was indeed the one who was entitled.
We resolved this impasse by obtaining a question from the family via the
American Attorney to which only a relative would know the answer. A cousin
of Mr Hank’s had a disability, and so we asked Mr Hank to describe
the nature of this disability. The full page of description which came
back from Mr Hank settled the question and removed any doubts about his
identity. Not only could he describe how the disability had been inflicted,
but he described in very precise detail how the family had accommodated
her, and the family “betrayal” which followed.
The completeness of this answer, along with the documentation we had
persuaded Mr Hank to send, was enough to satisfy all parties involved – and
a distribution took place shortly after.
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