A woman who spent decades trying to fulfil her mother’s dying wish to track down her biological family had the shock of her life when she learned a team of professional heir hunters was trying to contact her – and that she was due thousands of pounds from an unknown relative.
Charmaine Bird had spent over 20 years struggling to uncover the truth about her mother’s tragic upbringing before being unexpectedly contacted by Fraser and Fraser, a probate research firm based in London.
“My mum was an orphan, and it affected her every single day of her life,” Charmaine said. “She never felt like she belonged anywhere. I promised her before she died that I would keep searching for answers, and I never stopped”.
Elizabeth Barbara Jones, Charmaine’s mother, was born in Zimbabwe but separated from her siblings as a child and was raised in an orphanage in Transkei, today part of South Africa.
Although she later discovered the identities of her parents, she was never fully accepted by her biological mother. The sense of rejection stayed with her until her death at the age of 82.
Charmaine, who was born in South Africa, said: “When my mother married and moved away, she ended up unknowingly living just kilometres from her biological mother.
“There was a man who kept approaching her, asking if she was related to a woman in the town. My mum would say no and that she was an orphan, but the man kept insisting. It turned out he was right.
“But her biological mother told her ‘You were a leaf I tore out of a book a long ago. Please don’t contact me.’”
Charmaine’s search for answers led to her mother’s lost brother, who she was reunited with after 70 years apart.
“The moment he saw her, he held her face in his hands and said, ‘My darling sister. I remember when they took you away,’” Charmaine said. “She sobbed like a baby. They were so alike – their hands, their smiles, even the way they looked at each other.”
But Charmaine’s story took an even more unexpected turn when she visited her Aunt Colleen who was living in England and had received a letter from Fraser and Fraser. The firm was investigating the case of Lynn Howell, an older woman who had died with no known family.
Shannon Freeman, a case manager at Fraser and Fraser, said:
“The case of Lynn Howell was full of challenges. The team struggled to locate her mother’s birth record.
“After piecing together fragmented records and overseas documentation, we managed to trace Lynn’s mother back to South Africa, where we found more than 20 beneficiaries.
“It turned out Lynn Howell and Charmaine were long-lost first cousins – Charmaine’s mother had been Lynn’s aunt.”
Charmaine said she was overwhelmed to learn someone else had been searching for her mother at the same time as her:
“She carried this pain for 82 years, never knowing where she belonged, never being fully accepted. To live with that your entire life is devastating.
“Finding out more about her mother – my grandmother – helped me understand that her life wasn’t easy either. Women in the 1920s and 30s had very few choices. Divorce, pregnancy outside marriage – these things came with enormous shame.”
Charmaine explained that the inheritance she is now due through being a beneficiary of Lynn Howell’s estate is not what is important to her, and that money was never the focus of her efforts.
“The focus was always my mum. Her life, her story and the truth. If anything, the inheritance was just another part of uncovering the past.”
Charmaine’s own life has been as international as the investigation itself. Having spent her career working in the hotel industry across the Middle East, she is now based in Dubai, where her professional journey has seen her take care of royalty. This background in high-level service and detail provided her with the resilience needed for her twenty-year search.
While this major chapter of her mother’s story has been resolved, Charmaine’s work is not yet finished. She is now continuing her search back another generation, driven by stories from her great-grandmother about their Irish heritage.
This episode is airing on the YouTube channel @probatetv on 26th February 2026.
