The search for beneficiaries...

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. He was quite elderly, and it was entirely possible that he would already be deceased.

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 e-mail. 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 had a disability, and so we asked Mr Hank to describe the nature of this disability. The full page of description that 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” that 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.

Column sponsored and compiled by Philippe Fraser of Fraser & Fraser Genealogists and International Probate Researchers. www.fraserandfraser.com