Here at Arkline we offer a specialised beneficiary tracing service for clients with deceased customers, in which we can trace living beneficiaries for individual, bulk, or overseas cases, writes Becky Haslam.
What is a beneficiary?
A beneficiary is anybody who receives money or gifts from a benefactor(this could be a person or an organisation or company). Most often in the cases we deal with, the beneficiary is a person who receives a payment of money from the estate of someone who has passed away. This is usually, although not always, a close family member of the deceased e.g. spouse, children,grandchildren or siblings, who have been assigned to receive money in the deceased’s last will and testament i.e. to benefit from the estate, or have been assigned the role of Executor or Administrator through probate.
Finding a beneficiary:
No Date of Death, No Problem
Whilst we always encourage clients to provide us with as much information as possible, starting with just a name, last known address, and date of birth we can conduct a mortality trace to obtain a date of death for the subject of enquiry.
Once we have obtained a date of death, we can conduct searches for documentary evidence, this could include Grant of Probates, Letters of Administration, Death Certificates, or Confirmations (in Scotland). From here we can begin tracing Executors, Administrators and/or Informants.
Executor deceased? Where there’s a Will, there’s a way!
It’s not unusual for us to receive cases where the customer has died over 20 years ago! If the Executor was their spouse or sibling, it may be that they have also sadly passed away. In the event of this occurring, we can dive in to the customer’s Will which will usually list plenty of children, grandchildren, nieces, and nephews for us to trace. The addresses on Wills are often even more out of date than those on the Probate - some not having been updated since the 1970s - but with access to a wide range of databases not available to the public and an expert trace team we can conduct in-depth traces to find beneficiaries, sometimes using only a name.
There can be lots of other valuable details found in a Will. For instance, when tracing a potential beneficiary, we may find that they are mentionedi n the customer’s Will as someone they absolutely do not want to benefit fromthe estate. This is potentially important information regarding the handling ofthe estate and its beneficiaries, which we will report back to the client.
Not sure on the name?
One of the many benefits of using Arkline is that through our access to a range of specialised databases we can clean up any data we are provided with. It is always helpful to have a selection of data to work with, so that if there are any inaccuracies e.g. misspelled names, mixed up dates of birth, incorrect house numbers or postcodes, we can quickly find the correct information and return the rectified data back to the client.
Conclusion
Finding beneficiaries is easier said than done, and a variety of challenges can be encountered along the way. Arkline has years of experience tracing beneficiaries through a combination of professional methods and tools, so we are equipped to facing any tracing challenges and provide our clients with a speedy, efficient, and affordable service. To find out more about our beneficiary tracing services click here.
