subject: Finding Your Missing Beneficiary Might Be More Challenging Than You Thought [print this page] Many of the most exciting stories involve a search for a missing heir. Sometimes there is a search for the truth about a fake missing heir. One of Huckleberry Finn's adventures involved him with two villains posing as the long lost uncles so they could rob three orphan girls of their father's estate. Poor little Cedric Errol became Little Lord Fauntleroy as a result of his grandfather's search for his estranged son's child.
There are many reasons to commence a genealogical search. Often it is because that missing person is entitled to a share of an estate. Sometimes it is because if that person is deceased, someone else is entitled to that inheritance. Or maybe it's because the missing heir is a potential organ donor.
Sometimes an individual who is still alive wants to locate a missing or estranged family member to make sure that person will receive a share in the estate. A popular plot device is to locate a family member in order to decide whether or not that person is worthy of an inheritance. This is the cue for an imposter to appear.
Most often locating a missing heir is the business of the lawyers that are in charge of the estate of the deceased. They might be called up to find and notify all of the relatives and others mentioned in the will. If there is no will, it might be necessary to discover the existence of family members that nobody knows about.
Locating and establishing the existence of legatees can be a complex task. Daughters present a particular problem because they usually change their name when they marry. Some of them marry several times in different states or countries and take a different name each time. Their children might have the names of their respective fathers and their daughters might have the names of their husbands.
Sons usually keep their own names but they can cause complications, too. For example, a son might have fathered a child who didn't have his name. He might have married in a foreign country so there would be no record in this country.
An understanding of genealogy can be helpful. You may have to trace back a generation or two to discover that the nearest living relative is a descendant of a half sister of the grandfather of the testator. Maybe that sister was adopted by a stepfather and lived in another country. She might have had descendants of which one survived and is now entitled to some or all of the estate.
The situation would be even more complicated if this child grew up to be a criminal and used a number of aliases. But then he might have had a religious conversion and become a missionary on another continent. And maybe he died but not until after he adopted an orphaned child who is now the testator's next-of-kin.
