Irish heirs enjoy €5m emigrant windfall
One company alone distributed more than €5m to beneficiaries here in a recent 18-month period.
The windfall includes sizeable estates left by childless Irish emigrants who died in England and Wales with no known family and without making a will.
The treasury has now published an historical list of unclaimed estates dating back to the 1990s to track down potential heirs.
The bona vacantia (ownerless property) list of more than 10,500 unclaimed estates features hundreds of Irish-born men and women who died intestate between 1997 and 2012. Many of their estates are worth little but others include bank savings, life insurance policies and real estate valued at tens of thousands of euro.
In one recent case, Irish heirs were sought to inherit almost €2m left by a childless widow in upmarket Belgravia, London.
Irish cases account for about 10% of the caseload of one of the UK’s biggest probate research firms, Fraser & Fraser.
One of its three Ireland-focused teams repatriated about €5.1m to unsuspecting beneficiaries here in a single 18-month period up to 2011.
The individual estates, originating mainly in Britain and the US, were worth between €23,000 and nearly €2m.
“We have a good success rate with Irish cases because often we are dealing with large Catholic families and therefore there are more potential beneficiaries to look for,” said partner Neil Fraser.
One case involved 89-year old Elizabeth Malhotra (née Grogan) who died in London in 2009 leaving an estate valued at £1.7m (almost €2m).
Belfast-born Ms Grogan had emigrated to America in the 1950s where she married airline executive Mohan Malhotra from Pakistan. The couple, who had no children, moved to London in the 1990s where they lived in Belgravia.
Ms Malhotra’s estate has recently been settled and is to be distributed among a large number of distant cousins, many living in Belfast.
Many Irish surnames such as Murphy, Kelly, O’Brien, and O’Connor feature on the treasury’s lists of unclaimed estates. Not all are first-generation Irish while the birthplaces of those who are, is not always known.
The list includes the estate of Michael Delaney, a 70-year-old bachelor who died in Luton, Bedfordshire in 2000, leaving £45,000 (€53,000). Fraser & Fraser cannot find any heirs for Mr Delaney’s money.
William Thomas O’Donnell, 79, who died in Plaistow, London, on Nov 6, 2002 left an estate, worth £40,000 (€47,000), which remains unclaimed 11 years after his death.
* bonavacantia.gov.uk
