The Heir–Locator’s Lost Inheritance
| Author | David Capper |
| Published date | 01 March 1997 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2230.00080 |
| Date | 01 March 1997 |
The Heir-Locator’s Lost Inheritance
David Capper*
Where a person dies intestate the surviving relatives usually have no difficulty in
establishing entitlement to the estate. Rarely does anyone die leaving no known
relatives and their property passing to the state. Occasionally emigrants from the
British Isles to former British colonies or to the United States may lose all contact
with their families back home and die possessed of substantial assets without their
relatives in the old country being aware of this fact, or even sometimes of their
relationship to the deceased person. This is where the heir-locator (or genealogist)
enters the frame and attempts to tap a potentially lucrative business in tracing the
heirs of deceased persons and helping them establish their entitlement to property
which often deserves the appellation ‘pennies from heaven’ or ‘money from
America’. The modus operandi of these heir-locators, however, was dealt a body
blow by the Irish Supreme Court in Fraser vBuckle,
1
where the heir-locator’s
agreement with the beneficiaries was held to be void as involving a champertous
maintenance of legal proceedings. The law of the contract was stated to be English
law and the decision therefore offers a view of the English law on this subject as
well as being the determinative ruling on the Irish law.
The facts were that one Evelyn Herbert, a resident of the State of New Jersey in
the United States of America, died intestate and without any known relatives,
leaving an estate which turned out to have a net value of $763,758.57. The
plaintiffs were a London firm of ‘genealogists and international probate
researchers’ and were informed by their United States agents of the existence of
this estate. They concluded a one transaction partnership agreement with a
genealogist in Belfast in consideration of a 40 per cent cut in the fee and he in turn
traced the beneficiaries, cousins of the deceased, three of whom resided in the
Republic of Ireland and the other in Scotland. The plaintiffs concluded agreements
with the beneficiaries under which the plaintiffs agreed to disclose to the
beneficiaries details of their claims and the parties were to co-operate with one
another in the gathering of evidence and presentation of the claims to the courts in
New Jersey. The plaintiffs agreed to bear all costs in the preparation and
presentation of the claims and the beneficiaries agreed to pay the plaintiffs one
third of the net amount of any recoveries from the estate. English law was specified
as the proper law of the contract because the courts of New Jersey were thought to
be hostile to heir-locator agreements and likely to declare the contract
unenforceable.
2
The plaintiffs established the beneficiaries’ claims to the
satisfaction of the Superior Court of New Jersey and disbursed the proceeds to
them. The Irish beneficiaries did not pay the plaintiffs their one third share,
solicitors acting for them writing to the plaintiffs contending that the heir-locator
agreements were champertous and void. A sum of $60,000 was offered on a
quantum meruit basis but the plaintiffs rejected this and issued proceedings in the
Irish High Court seeking specific performance of the agreements.
The Modern Law Review Limited 1997 (MLR 60:2, March). Published by Blackwell Publishers,
108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.286
*School of Law, Queen’s University of Belfast.
1 [1996] 2 ILRM 34.
2International Tracers of America vRinier 139 NJ Super 573 (App Div 1976).
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