The heir ‘detectives’ who hand out more than $100 million every year

If a stranger informed you that you had inherited $2.5 million from a long-lost cousin, chances are you would scoff and hang up the phone, or delete the message.

But what if the windfall was real?

Working on the jigsaw puzzle (left to right): Ann Church, Jo Walton, Matthew Hardy, Kath Ensor and Lee Hooper from State Trustees.Credit: Justin McManus

Genealogists at Victoria’s State Trustees track down living relatives of people who have died without a will, and give out more than $100 million each year.

But sometimes potential recipients knock back inheritances, even those in the millions of dollars.

The five researchers, based in the Melbourne offices of State Trustees, a state government-backed financial and legal services company, once found 60 heirs of a deceased person. However, just one, an 83-year-old man, was alive.

Researcher Lee Hooper said the man’s response to being told he was entitled to $2.5 million was to say: “I don’t believe it, I’ve never met that person.” That was followed by: “We’re not interested. Thanks, though.”

Hooper said: “He thought I was trying to sell him something.” The man’s son, however, later indicated that the family was, in fact, interested.

One woman, living in Ukraine, turned down her deceased sister’s $1 million estate, even when State Trustees employed a local lawyer to knock on her door. She didn’t believe her sister had moved to Australia.

Hooper’s colleague, Kath Ensor, a State Trustees genealogist for 30 years, says that with scams being common, the reticence is understandable.

Despite that, so far this year, this genealogy team has solved 379 cases worth more than $120 million.

They include the biggest single estate they’ve known – $12 million – given to two sisters who live interstate. It came from a half-sister the pair had never met, who had died without a valid will.

Some cases reveal painful family secrets or reopen old wounds. “We almost work like counsellors sometimes,” Ensor says.

Researchers occasionally have to inform clients that a disabled sibling they hadn’t known about, who spent their life in state care, has just died.

And Hooper says it “happens quite a bit” that a deceased parent has bigamously had another family, unknown to their children.

Ensor said that in one case, “I contacted a father, telling him his son had died, and he didn’t respond for some time”. The man’s surviving children informed Ensor their brother was incarcerated for killing his mother.

Ensor says the work can be like solving jigsaw puzzles.

“It’s very satisfying to put all the clues together and to come out with a resolution,” she said.

Once, Ensor contacted a woman in Sudan, in Africa, and informed her that her brother had died in Melbourne.

The woman later wrote to Ensor, saying that with the inheritance — less than $10,000 — her parents had built a house.

“It was the first brick home they had ever had,” Ensor said. “She sent me a photograph of it. They were very grateful.”

Hooper said that in Victoria, there was no public list of unclaimed estates. She said the best way to avoid issues around estates was to leave a valid will.

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