Loom resources · England & Wales
My Relatives Are Using an Heir Hunter — Do I Have to Use Them Too?
How claims, administrators and individual fee agreements actually fit together — and what to establish before you sign anything.
Your cousin has signed.
Your sister has signed.
Half the family WhatsApp group appears to have signed.
An heir hunter or solicitor is dealing with an unclaimed estate in your family — and everyone seems to be happily handing over a percentage of whatever they inherit.
Which raises a perfectly reasonable question:
Do you have to do the same?
Not necessarily.
The fact that another relative has agreed to use an heir hunter, probate genealogist or solicitor doesn’t automatically mean you’ve entered into the same agreement.
But there’s a slightly bigger question hiding underneath:
Who is actually administering the estate now?
Because once a claim has been accepted and an administrator is dealing with the estate, the process isn’t simply every beneficiary making an individual claim to BVD and collecting their own little pot of money.
Let’s untangle it.
This is the question we’d ask before signing anything.
Because the company that found your family isn’t necessarily the person administering the estate.
And the person administering the estate isn’t necessarily being paid through a percentage agreement with each beneficiary.
Confused yet?
Welcome to probate. 😏
There are several different jobs that can be happening.
An individual beneficiary service or commission agreement between you and a company.
This is not automatically the same thing as administering the estate.
Someone has to establish the family
A probate genealogist, heir hunter or solicitor might research the deceased’s family and identify potential entitled relatives.
If they’re offering that service directly to you, they may ask you to enter into a fee or commission agreement.
That’s an agreement worth understanding before you sign it.
Someone has to administer the estate
Once the appropriate claim has been established, an administrator can become responsible for dealing with the estate.
Their job isn’t simply to find relatives.
They have legal responsibilities around administering the estate and ultimately distributing it to those entitled.
BVD’s current guidance says that once it accepts a claim, it doesn’t require claims from all the other relatives because their claims are protected by law.
The administrator has a legal duty to administer the estate properly and distribute it to all those entitled.
That’s a rather important sentence.
What if a solicitor is administering it?
Don’t automatically confuse a solicitor’s estate-administration fees with an heir hunter’s percentage agreement with an individual beneficiary.
They’re not necessarily the same thing.
A solicitor may be instructed to carry out work involved in administering the estate, with appropriate costs dealt with as part of the estate administration.
Separately, a beneficiary might have agreed to pay a company a percentage of their own inheritance for tracing, research or representation.
You need to know which arrangement you’re looking at.
If somebody sends you a contract asking for a percentage of your inheritance, ask:
- Is this fee for administering the estate?
- Or is this a separate agreement for representing or tracing me as a beneficiary?
- Do I need to sign this agreement in order for the administrator to recognise my entitlement?
- Who is the actual administrator?
- Has a Grant of Letters of Administration already been issued?
Those questions can completely change how you look at the document sitting in front of you.
Put the tree to work
Your family tree shouldn’t just sit there.
Put it to work.
Put my family tree to workLoom identifies potential connections. It does not establish legal entitlement, guarantee inheritance, file claims or prove a relationship.
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