Do heir hunters deal with small estates?
- Partner News
Blanchards- 0
- 3 minutes read
On the face of things dealing with small estates wouldn’t appear to be beneficial to us. It may not even appear to be beneficial to the beneficiaries. A small estate could comprise of assets worth less than around £10,000.
This would mean they wouldn’t own their house and any assets they do have would be items left after passing. After going through the inheritance process and paying the required fees, there may not be much money left over, if there was any to begin with.
Fees include
- Grant applications
- Will searches
- Assets searches
- Death certificates
- Decree absolutes Bankruptcy searches
- Administration costs
Despite this, Blanchards always take on small estates. Why? Because you never know what the deceased may own which initially goes unnoticed. It is not uncommon for estates to be worth a pittance on the surface but have hundreds of thousands if not millions of pounds after digging a little deeper. For this reason, Blanchards always take on small estates!
Under the surface
A common instance of this would be a hidden bank account having a large sum of money. Other instances would be the deceased having a life insurance policy of around £100k. However, we have also encountered rarer cases of seemingly small estates being worth a fortune.
Months ago, we received a case which on the surface was worth very little. The intestate lived and died alone in a council house in a low income area. They didn’t own their house, a car or anything valuable on the surface.
Nevertheless, Blanchards was contacted by a friend of the deceased who informed us of a revelation – the deceased owned a few bitcoins. At the time of the purchase they wouldn’t have been worth too much. However, with bitcoin becoming recognized as an official form of currency and prices skyrocketing, they were now worth over £100,000. A number the deceased was probably unaware of at the time of his passing.
There has also been cases where although the intestate didn’t own a property or have much money, they did own something of high value discovered from an asset search. Collections are always highly valued especially complete collections including rare items. Common collections we find are of stamps and coins which could both hold high value. Classic cars and car collections have also been found when performing asset searches which can certainly hold high value.
Ultimately, for reasons stated above, Blanchards always take on smaller estates as you never know what they may hold. Do you know of a deceased estate that we can assist with? For more information, please contact us and follow us on LinkedIn.
This article was submitted to be published by Blanchards Inheritance as part of their advertising agreement with Today’s Wills and Probate. The views expressed in this article are those of the submitter and not those of Today’s Wills and Probate.
Blanchards are a firm of probate. We specialise in locating missing heirs and beneficiaries of Estates. As well as specialising in ‘people finding’ we also locate properties, funds and assets, both within the UK and internationally.
We provide a fast and efficient service to our clients within the legal sector, it is paramount to us as a business that the experience when seeking out our services is always excellent. We aim to offer fast, efficient solutions to any issue our clients may have.
Our strong relationships within the legal sector have come from our ability to do the work required to the highest standard for the best price. We have built strong foundations with legal professionals up and down the country. Our attention to detail will not be beaten, due to our more intimate approach our clients within the legal sector know that they will have a researcher assigned to their case that will be able to offer the solution they need.
As well as our dealings within the legal sector, we also work closely with the public sector, assisting with tracing next of kin for people who have passed away intestate.
