About Probate Genealogy

As probate genealogists we provide a specialist service to the legal profession and financial institutions to facilitate the settlement of unclaimed estates. For the most part, our work involves tracing the next of kin of a person who has died leaving a sum of money.

This usually involves one of the following situations:

• cases of intestacy – where the deceased did not leave a will
• cases of partial intestacy – where a will was made but fails to make adequate provision for disposal of all the available funds
• cases of missing legatees or beneficiaries – where a will contains a pecuniary legacy to a person/ persons (not necessarily related to the deceased) whose whereabouts are unknown to the executors

Probate genealogists use publicly available records and databases to construct the family tree of the person who has died, in order to trace the legally entitled next of kin.