The Heir Search Brief Episode 1: What Is an Heir Search, and When Does a Case Need One Runtime 4:17 | heirpros.com/podcast ------------------------------------------------------------ Jessica: Thanks for listening in today. An estate cannot close until the heirs are found and proven. When the family tree has a gap in it, that one open question holds up everything behind it. I'm Jessica, and I'm here with Norby Bandan of HeirPros. Norby, start with the definition. What is an heir search? Norby: Thanks Jessica for this discussion and a great place to start. An heir search is a genealogical investigation that identifies and proves every person legally entitled to inherit from an estate. Attorneys order one when there is no will, when a beneficiary cannot be located, or when a claim to heirship is contested. What it produces is a documented record the court can act on. Jessica: Nice. Why does that need a specialist? An attorney's office can pull records, can it not? Norby: They can. What tends to go wrong sits in how heirship gets proven and documented for the court, rather than in the research itself. Distribute an estate to an incomplete set of heirs and the exposure lands on the fiduciary who approved it. A probate court wants evidence that the search was reasonable and that someone wrote down how it was done. Jessica: Norby, walk me through what the work looks like. Norby: Sure, we start from what the file already holds. The will if one exists, any trust documents, prior family trees, and whatever the family has put on the record. Then it moves into public records. Birth, marriage and death registrations. Probate files from earlier deaths in the same family. Each document is a link in a chain of descent, and the chain has to hold under questioning. Jessica: Let's move on. Where do most searches break down? Norby: Incomplete records, mostly. Estrangement is the other one. A family that stopped speaking two generations ago leaves very little behind to follow. Blended families make heirship harder to read, and when two people claim the same position in the tree, the file becomes a contested matter before anyone has proven anything. Jessica: Norby, this has to be the tough part of the search. How do you know when you have the right person? Norby: Jessica, verification is where this separates from hobby genealogy. A name that matches is not a proven person. Every relationship in the chain gets confirmed against more than one independent source, because a probate judge is entitled to ask how we know. Jessica: You mentioned heirs abroad and I can imagine many family's have international heirs. So, how much of this crosses borders? Norby: True. Enough that we built for it. International heir searches and kinship research are their own service line, and the record systems change at every border. A civil registry in Europe does not behave like a county clerk in the States. When a record comes back in another language, the translation goes into the file alongside the original, because a court is not going to take our word for what it says. Jessica: Fantastic so HeirPros deals with multiple countries and multiple languages. That's fantastic. And what does the attorney receive at the end? Norby: Jessica, a full report of findings with the sources behind them. A time log showing where the research hours went. Copies of every record we pulled, translated where the record is not in English, and printed if the court wants paper. It sets out who the heirs are and what evidence entitles them to a share. A court can rule on that. A list of names it cannot. Jessica: How long does it take to complete an heir search these days? Norby: A straightforward case can be handled within a month. Complex files take longer, and compiling a court admissible record can run several months when the line is broken, when the heirs are abroad, or when documents were lost. Order early. Every week spent searching on your own is a week off the probate schedule behind it. Jessica: I can imagine delayed probate cases being the biggest pain point for individuals and law firms. Costing estates hundreds of thousands of dollars. Okay. Last one, Norby. How is it priced? Norby: Flat rate. No surprise fees, and nothing based on a percentage of the estate. From $500 to a few thousands, depending on the number of unknown heirs and their geographical location. We've made it easy for you, there is a free quote calculator on our website for anyone wanting get some accurate information on pricing. We handle individual cases to firms running steady caseloads through our partner program. Check out the free quote form or give us a call. Jessica: Norby, thank you for your time today. This was an important topic. Norby: Thank you Jessica. Like I said we're HeirPros and our website site is Heir Pros dot com. We're a flat fee heir search firm working with probate attorneys and estate professionals in the United States, in Canada and across Europe. If you want a straight answer on whether your case needs a search, get in touch with us on our website. Jessica: Norby Bandan founded HeirPros, and you can reach the team at Heir Pros dot com. Good Day.