Suprise windfall for relatives of one Irish woman as estates worth thousands lie unclaimed in Britain

Finders International said relatives and heirs have just 12 years to claim an estate once it has been reported unclaimed to the British State. File picture. 

A deceased Irish woman’s estate in the UK; including a house worth more than €400,000 (£350,000), nearly went unclaimed if not for the diligent work of 'heir hunters' handling more and more cases of Irish people dying without a will in Britain.

Sheila Lancaster, nee McCaffrey, born in Clones, Co Monaghan in 1928, died in 2015 in a nursing home in Essex, England aged 92, with no will and no known next of kin.

The English properly that lay unclaimed with no next of kin identified immediately. Picture: Finders International

Probate genealogists, or ‘heir hunters’ from Finders International recently found 33 relatives of Ms Lancaster living in Ireland, Britain, and the US who are set to receive a share of the estate including a three-bedroom house in the Essex market town of Saffron Waldon.

The case is the latest in what heir hunters have described as the rising number of Irish born people dying intestate with no known next of kin in England and Wales.

Currently on the UK government’s Bona Vacantia list - the name given to these ‘ownerless estates’– there are currently in excess of 450 estates of Irish-born people waiting to be claimed from the British authorities.

Finders International said relatives and heirs have just 12 years to claim an estate once it has been reported unclaimed to the British State.

“There are an incredible number of estates of Irish-born people waiting to be claimed from the UK government. If left unclaimed these estates are passed to the Crown.

“In the majority of cases it is a bank, a local authority or a hospital that has informed the UK government’s legal department about the circumstances of the death, and are seeking relatives to come forward and claim the deceased’s estate,” said Maeve Mullin, a senior researcher with Finders International Dublin.

The probate genealogy firm has said millions of pounds could remain unclaimed simply as a result of the ever-increasing numbers of Irish in the UK losing touch with relatives in Ireland and that the case of Sheila Lancaster nee McCaffrey is only the most recent example of this.

According to Finders International, a recent YouGov survey showed almost 60% of British adults do not have a will and that this is a similar situation for adults in Ireland.

“The only other criterion needed to be entered on the Bona Vacantia list is that the estate has a minimum value of £500 ( €577).

“In truth, the total value of these estates is likely to be a lot more than this with approximately one of five unclaimed estates having a property. This adds up to several millions of pounds of unclaimed estates in England and Wales waiting to be claimed by relatives of deceased Irish emigrants,” said Ms Mullin.

The firm operates a publicly searchable database of all unclaimed estates of Irish born people who have died in England or Wales since 1997.

The entire list can be accessed online here: https://www.unclaimedestates.ie/