Hack/Thompson Heir Hunters

Heir hunters spend their lives tracking down the families of people who died without leaving a will.

They hand over thousands of pounds to long-lost relatives

who had no idea they were in line for a windfall.

Could they be knocking at your door?

Heir hunting company, Fraser and Fraser have a tough day with the heirs on a hugely competitive case.

Could you just give me two minutes so I can ask you some family information? Nothing else, please.

-It's all sorted out now. Don't bother me again. I'm OK.

-What...

And the heir hunters find themselves looking into the estate of a free spirited academic.

She was different, I suppose, in the life that she chose for herself.

She did something that in those days, it was quite adventurous.

Plus how you may be entitled to inherit some of the unclaimed estates held by the Treasury.

Could you have thousands of pounds heading your way?

More than two-thirds of people die without leaving a will.

If no obvious relatives are found, their money goes to the Government

and last year they made a staggering £18 million from unclaimed estates.

That's where the heir hunters step in.

There are more than 30 heir hunting companies who make it their business to track down the rightful kin.

Fraser and Fraser is one of the oldest firms of heir hunters in Britain.

It is run by Andrew, Charles and Neil Fraser.

Our job is incredibly exciting. We're tracing family trees, delving back into people's history,

delving back in time and looking at the hidden mysteries around people's families.

In its 30-year history, it's tracked down over 50,000 heirs entitled to a whooping sum of over £100 million.

It's 7am on Thursday and the team are looking into the Treasury's list

of unclaimed estates, which was published overnight.

We've got to get these addresses.

They've chosen several cases to follow and are cracking on with the initial research.

I'm expecting it to be quite active today, quite competitive really, and fingers crossed we'll do well.

One case they're following is that of Joan Hack, whose maiden name was Galloway.

She died alone in 2002 in Bangor, North Wales.

She had no brothers and sisters and no children, but for many years

had lived with her husband in a small village on Anglesey.

It was after his sudden death that Joan became more withdrawn from the community.

Her neighbours, Richard and Helen Daniel, knew her better than most.

Definitely she was a bit of a loner.

When Victor passed away, her husband passed away,

it left, you know, a hole, basically.

And I don't think she could ever bridge that gap,

because she wasn't a socialiser with the village community.

You can't explain it, really. She was all right when he was alive.

She used to speak to people, but when he went, she wasn't the same.

She stopped speaking to the people in the village then,

and people tried to help her, but she didn't want to know.

She didn't leave a will, and her property, a small bungalow, was left unclaimed.

I'm nearly certain that there was no close family.

You know, I never saw anybody there as relatives

in visiting their property. No, definitely not.

Sadly, since her death, the house has fallen into disrepair.

But despite its current condition,

Joan's total estate is estimated to be worth as much as £200,000.

The investigation is being run by one of the longest-serving

case managers, David Milchard, also known in the office as Grimble.

I've got a little job called Joan Evelyn Galloway. It looks like she's coming out of the Liverpool area.

Got no near kin, so we're going for cousins.

To track down any heirs, the researchers need to piece together a family tree.

Working out generation by generation who the relatives are and if any are still alive.

Fraser's aren't the only company working the Treasury list.

With rival firms chasing the same cases,

the team need to keep one step ahead of the competition and find this information as fast as they can.

How are we getting on with the census?

The UK Census, produced every ten years, lists all the members

of each household and gives key information to get the hunt started.

I've got the census on the mother's side and I'm now looking

for the census on the father's side to confirm the top line if we can.

From the census they've already identified Joan's parents - James Galloway and Evelyn Littleton,

at least one uncle on the mother's side and seven aunts

and one uncle on the father's side.

Now they need to find their descendants in order to find living beneficiaries.

Through the records, the team have also uncovered some of her paternal grandfather's interest in history.

Born in 1843 Edinburgh, James Galloway moved

to the boom town of Liverpool to pursue a career in shipbuilding.

In the late 19th century, Liverpool was the second port

of the British Empire and a hub of shipping and ship making.

With the Merseyside docks at its heart, the population of the city trebled.

James began as a boiler cleaner, but moved up the ranks to become a contractor and it seems he ended up

an influential man with a Liverpool road named after him.

Records reveal that all but one of the James's children were born in West Derby,

a district of Liverpool, and the team believe many of the descendants will still live in the area today.

The researchers need to find birth, death and marriage records for all

the aunts and uncles to find their descendants who would be heirs.

All the births, deaths and marriages are on our machines and it's just a case of trawling

through them and making sure, you know, we don't miss anything and doing it as quickly as possible.

With a lot of family, there's a lot of searches to do.

I need at least two people to help me and Dom.

Al, worklist, mate.

Getting somewhere at last.

The office are in high spirits and with lots of people now working the case, they quickly come across

the marriage records of Joan's paternal uncle, Joseph Galloway to an Eliza Burns and this leads

to the births of their children, George, Joseph, Cyril and Jessie.

It also seems that 81-year-old Jessie,

a first cousin to Joan, may still be alive.

If the Heir Hunters can speak to her, she may have some vital clues to the rest of the family,

so they need to contact her as soon as they can.

The uncle, Joseph, who had four children, we've got one of his daughters still living in Liverpool.

I tried to call her, but the line is engaged.

I'm now trying to get Paul Matthews,

who is about 15 miles away from Liverpool, to go and call on her.

Fraser's employs a squadron of travelling Heir Hunters

who are ready to go wherever the hunt takes them.

Their job is to sniff out new clues and follow new leads.

To help the case, they rush round the country collecting vital birth, death and marriage certificates

as well as interviewing neighbours of the deceased.

But the really key part is meeting and signing up heirs before the competition.

Ex-police sergeant Paul Matthews is their Midlands-based heir hunter

and is well used to spending his Thursdays on the road.

Am I still heading towards Liverpool to start off with?

You're going to a place walled Waterloo in Liverpool.

Because of the estate's estimated £200,000 value, Grimble suspects

lots of competition on the case and wastes no time in getting Paul Matthews to call at the address.

The deceased had an uncle Joseph and Jessie is his daughter

and Jessie is still alive,

so hopefully if we get lucky, she'll be good for her age

and not only can we get her signed up,

we can get what information she knows about the family because hopefully she knows

all about her uncles and aunts and their children, which will save us an awful lot of time and research.

It's only two hours into the investigation

and they've already identified their first potential heir.

As there is no close kin, in this case, it's cousins they're looking for.

Having already found the daughter of Joan's paternal uncle, they now

concentrate all their efforts on tracing the descendants of Joan's seven paternal aunts.

There's Nellie up here who's still outstanding.

Annie, Nellie, Elizabeth.

Three of them outstanding still.

I can't even read what her middle name is.

Martha...Pool, ooh...

Meanwhile, on the outskirts of Liverpool, Paul is having some problems of his own.

ENGAGED TONE

It's engaged for a while, so it could be off the hook. Who knows?

So we'd better get our skates on.

The heir in Liverpool has been engaged all morning and back in the office,

they're starting to worry that a rival company has got there first.

You don't get two minutes up here to do things.

And the stress is beginning to show.

Speaking to family members can be vital as it may unlock the whole family tree.

So as Paul arrives in the street of Jessie, the potential heir, he gives it another try.

'Please leave your message after the tone.'

Hello, Mrs Winstanley.

My name is Paul Matthews, I work for a probate research company called Fraser and Fraser.

A relative of yours, a distant cousin, has passed away, left a sum of money. We're trying to find

family members so that estate gets shared between them as opposed to going to the Government.

If when you come back, if you give us a phone call and I'll tell you a bit more about it.

As Jessie doesn't seem to be answering to anybody, Paul Matthews

resorts to knocking on neighbours' doors

to see if anyone knows of her whereabouts.

She can't be too far away, I wouldn't have thought.

But we don't know, because there is nobody here who can tell us where she is.

That's a little bit frustrating.

We've got here before anybody else, I think, and we haven't got a reply.

I might have to sit back and wait and I'll tell the office what is going on

and I'll leave her a letter to give us a call as soon as she gets back.

All he can now do is wait.

George R Galloway - who's got the marriages?

In the office, the pressure to find a breakthrough to the elusive paternal aunt is mounting.

We still haven't got anything for Nellie.

There's too many people running around and it is not all coming together how it should do.

Not one to give up, Paul decides to give Jessie one last try.

-Hello, is that Mrs Winstanley?

-Yes.

Paul Matthews from Fraser and Fraser. I've left you...

The matter's in hand, thank you.

I've been here - I know another chap has also contacted you.

Could you spare me just two minutes of your time, please?

I'm in the same road as yourself.

I was there earlier and left you a letter. Could you spare two minutes?

You did, but the matter's in hand now, thank you.

Could you just give me two minutes so I can ask you some family information, nothing else, please?

No. It's all sorted out now.

-Don't bother me again.

-But what...

-I'm OK. Thank you.

-But...

We managed to speak to one heir so far

and we're the third people to contact them,

so from all the sounds of it, we're not doing very well at all.

After a good start this morning, the competition are now hot on the case.

Will an unusual piece of research that the team uncover be the key

to getting them one step ahead of their rivals?

Not all cases have such tough competition, especially

if the Heir Hunters get them before they appear on the Treasury list.

This is what happened when Fraser's found themselves being asked

to investigate the estate

of Barbara Thompson, a free-spirited intellectual from Sheffield.

I think she saw the world as her oyster at a time when perhaps other people hadn't

quite woken up to the fact that there is a world out there and I think that she was there and ready to go for it.

But Barbara's love of foreign places meant there were troubles ahead.

We're fairly good at knowing who inherits following the probate law.

In Barbara's case, as soon as we realised there was French property,

we've had to throw the rule book out the window.

French property law is totally different.

Barbara Thompson died in Sheffield in December 2007.

She was 70 years old and had never married or had kids.

For most of her adult life she'd lived and worked abroad

as a translator, fluent in seven languages.

Her estate consisted of her parents' martial home in Sheffield where

Barbara had grown up and her flat in Paris where she'd lived for years.

Barbara had died without leaving a will and it was a family member

who asked the Heir Hunters for their help to resolve the case.

It's been referred to us by what we refer to as a member of the public.

It's a second cousin to the deceased.

Knowing second cousins weren't entitled to inherit under English

and Welsh law, she called for help in tracking down any closer kin.

My first impressions on this was it was an estate which didn't appear

to have any beneficiaries and was going to be claimed by the Crown.

In hope of keeping Barbara's fortune in the family, the second cousin

gave the researchers a head start to finding heirs by passing on crucial family information.

The second cousin started off by giving us the name of the deceased, Barbara. Barbara Thompson.

Also was able to provide the date of death and the date of birth and the last known address for Barbara.

Now if we put that back into a Treasury solicitor's eyes and how we normally start our cases,

we never get given the date of birth, so already we've got more information than we normally start with.

So they began the hunt for heirs. On the deceased's maternal side, all trails went cold.

They moved on to her father, Henry Thompson's side of the family, but there they ran into other problems.

Thompson is not a very good name to research. It's quite a common name.

So it means when we're trying to confirm stuff up, we've got lots of searching to do and it's very,

very hard to identify an individual record.

After wading through thousands of entries under the name Thompson, the researchers eventually found

Barbara's two paternal aunts, Gladys and Annie.

Gladys was found to have died without children, so there were no beneficiaries there.

But Annie had married an Alfred Stokes

and this led the Heir Hunters to their son, Derek, a first cousin to Barbara and a potential beneficiary.

From the Stokes marriage we were able to straightaway find a birth and the birth of Derek.

So really within five, ten minutes from having a horrible case to research

with horrible names, which looked for all the best part and all our guts were telling us there weren't

going to be any beneficiaries, we had a decent surname and we'd found a birth from it.

Derek was certainly an entitled relative on this. He has certainly got a greater entitlement to any

of the money than the Treasury have, so it's a huge turning point for us.

With Derek identified as Barbara's first cousin and sole heir

to her estate, the office needed to make contact and tell him the news.

Derek Stokes and his wife Jill live less than half an hour from Barbara's Sheffield home.

They'd known her all her life, but were used to not hearing from her for years at a time.

Well, we got a phone call from Fraser and Fraser.

Basically to say that Barbara had died and that Derek was the heir.

It was quite a shock really, wasn't it? That Barbara had actually died.

Barbara Thompson was born in 1937.

An only child, she grew up in a loving home in Sheffield.

Barbara would have grown up

in a beautiful home, actually, a family home.

Mediocre really, their financial situation, I would think.

But they were very thrifty.

At school, Barbara was top of her class and gained a scholarship

to the prestigious Sheffield High School for Girls,

where she met life-long friend Andy Jameson.

I remember she went to Wales on holiday with her parents, probably,

and came back speaking some Welsh.

Later, she spent a bit of time in Egypt and came back speaking

some Arabic, and she just seemed to be able

to pick languages up quite easily.

Barbara enrolled to study languages at St Andrew's University in 1957,

a time when very few women went on to higher education.

I think it would have been her real sort of home from home, you know.

She would have found her metier, if that's the right word.

She would have found her place, because she loved anything academic and bookish.

Once Barbara had graduated,

she struck out on her own to experience the world.

She lived in Salamanca and in Paris, and worked in five languages -

English, German, French, Italian and Spanish.

She devoted herself to translating poetry, literature and other academic text.

I think Barbara could have made a better living if she had translated

perhaps novels and things like that, but it was just what she preferred.

It is what she was interested in, and that's what mattered to her.

It seems Barbara made a conscious decision

not to settle down and get married.

I would imagine she never married mainly because she was too independent. She would be just...

-Too much for a man.

-Too strong-willed and too independent to actually settle down and get married.

Plus she loved to travel.

-That's right.

-And she might have felt that might impede her travels.

And it was Barbara's travels that led her to settle in Paris, buying

a small flat on the Left Bank that Andy visited several times.

We had some fun together, and she opened doors for me to do

things in Paris that probably I would never have had the opportunity to do.

It gave me just a bit of an insight to what

it would be like to live in Paris, so I remember her with great affection.

While the flat was very small,

its prime location close to the Notre Dame cathedral

meant its value was fairly large, somewhere in the region of £150,000.

Jill and Derek have just returned from their first ever visit to Barbara's flat.

Well, I love the flat. When it was tidied up, as I say, it's quirky. It's in a beautiful part of Paris.

I mean, we were only there a weekend and we worked very hard

clearing the flat out, but we felt we had been away a couple of weeks, we were so relaxed there.

It was this French property that was about to put a spanner in the works

for Neil's rather neat-looking family tree.

Initially it seemed that Derek was the heir to both the Sheffield property and the Paris flat,

but deeper investigation revealed it was not to be that simple.

We have to deal with this property under the French probate law

and not the English probate law we've been dealing with the rest of the estate by.

Under French law the net is cast much wider, allowing more distant relatives to inherit.

In England we can only go back as far as the grandparents of the deceased and their descendants coming down.

So in England we deal with first cousins or first cousins once, twice, three, four times removed.

In France we can deal with second cousins or even third cousins should we have to go that far.

So Barbara's second cousin who initially referred the case now

became one of several second cousins entitled to some of her estate.

That's really good news, in fact.

That really makes us quite happy, because the person who gave it to us is now actually getting a reward.

She is only getting the French part of the family, but it's still good,

isn't it, that someone who gave it is getting the reward.

A total of eight second cousins were tracked down, each entitled to a share of the French estate.

The company's work on an estate does not end once the heirs have been found.

When Neil has completed the research, his brother Andrew

will take over the case and set about distributing the assets between the beneficiaries.

The majority of assets we find on the larger estates, certainly are going to involve the property.

On this particular case, it's a very interesting matter because we have two properties.

We have a flat in Paris and we have the old family house up in Sheffield.

Today, Andrew is on his way to Sheffield to look at Barbara's house

with Derek Stokes, the sole heir to the property.

So, let's see what we've got.

She tried so hard to keep it in the 1930s mode,

but she didn't have the money to do it.

And I think this is what led

to the gradual deterioration of the property.

Well, it's quite heartbreaking really, isn't it? More so for you.

It is, especially knowing Barbara, yeah.

Once they've cleared the house of Barbara's belongings, Derek and Jill plan to sell the property on.

-I would hope that somebody will...

-Get it back to what it was.

Yes, yes and improve it really and restore the garden

and the garage, and turn it into the nice family home that it was really.

-That's what I'd like anyway.

-Yes.

Jill and Derek had last seen Barbara at her mother's funeral in 1994.

As far as we knew Barbara had gone back to France

and she was there because that was the place she loved.

That was where she would want to be.

It turned out Barbara had got cancer and had actually returned

to the UK, living just half an hour from her relatives.

For all her free-spirited nature and love of life abroad, Barbara

had come back to the family home for the last two years of her life.

But she had chosen not to tell anyone about her situation.

It came as a shock, but at the same time it explained certain things.

I hadn't heard from her for two or three years perhaps.

But Barbara's legacy lives on in the memories of the people who knew her

and in the work she did that meant so much to her all her life.

I think she left a lot of friends who will always regard her highly.

I think she has probably left quite a mark in the academic world for the work that she's done,

and I think that anybody who knew her will always remember her with affection and a smile.

She was attractive.

She was different, I suppose, in the life that she chose for herself.

I shall remember Barbara with... SHE STRUGGLES TO SPEAK

Sorry. ..With great affection.

For every case that is solved, there are still those that stubbornly remain a mystery.

Currently over 3,000 names drawn from across the country are on the Treasury's unsolved case list.

Their assets will be kept for up to 30 years in the hope that eventually

someone will remember and come forward to claim their inheritance.

With estates valued at anything from £5,000 to millions of pounds,

the rightful heirs are out there somewhere.

Gerald Wilton of Andover in Hampshire passed on in February 2008.

Does that name conjure up any memories for you?

Did you know him? Could you even be related to him and missing out on your rightful inheritance?

Stasy Narbutas of Denmark Hill in London died in January 2008.

Despite Stasy's unusual name, heirs have so far proved elusive.

Do you have recollections that could solve this mystery?

Could you even be related?

Back in London, since appearing on the Treasury's list of unclaimed estates,

Fraser and Fraser have been investigating the case of Joan Hack.

She died in 2002, leaving an estimated £200,000 fortune, which the team need to reunite

with legal beneficiaries if they are to make their commission.

As Joan has no near kin, it's the extended family who stand to inherit.

Case manager Grimble had a great start, quickly identifying

numerous aunts and uncles as well as a living first cousin, but a rival company got there first.

She has obviously spoken to somebody else so, reluctantly, on this particular stem,

on this particular branch of it, then obviously we have to back away because it's the right thing to do.

If she doesn't want to see us, then that's it.

I'm not here to go knocking on her door and harassing people.

The more straightforward family genealogy will be attracting all the heir-hunting firms.

Fraser's need to draw on their vast expertise in complicated research

to break on to the more difficult family lines.

For the last few hours, they've been searching for the marriage records of Joan's Aunt Martha, who they believe

married a Henry Brookes, and they're still hunting for anything on her other aunt, Hester.

But a trawl through their wealth of records has rewarded them with a brilliant clue.

On a British Army record, I've been able to find a marriage for

Hester in 1900, that's 21st November 1900, and that's actually in Malta.

So it's why it didn't come up the first time through on our searches.

We've then gone and done some overseas work.

We've found a marriage for her in Malta, and that's to a Percy Edwin Walton.

We've also been able to find two births off that.

Finding these overseas records has helped identify Joan's relatives who descend from her Aunt Hester.

-Hester...

-Yeah?

..marries Percy Edwin Walton.

Hester Galloway married Percy Walton in Malta and they had

two children, Violet and Winifred.

Winifred is found to have died a spinster, so there won't be any beneficiaries there.

But from Violet, they found

the birth of a daughter, Janet.

She is the first cousin once removed

and an heir to Joan's estate.

Their clever detective work has put them back on track, and a phone call to Janet sets up an appointment with

travelling heir hunter Dave Hadley, who is only ten miles away from her home.

-'We actually need you in Saffron Walden.'

-Saffron Walden?

-'Yeah.'

-OK.

-'It's on the Herts/Essex border.'

-OK.

We're gradually beginning to get it all sorted out, but we've been hampered by a bit of competition.

That's not helping us at the moment.

But it will sort itself out.

After meeting Janet, Dave has some crucial info to feed back to Grimble.

Right, I've spoken to Mrs Garret.

-Yeah?

-Apparently James Galloway was married twice. Did you know that?

'No, I didn't know that.'

Right, she reckons that James Galloway has married twice.

-'Yes.'

-And that Annie, Margaret and Elizabeth...

-'Come off the first marriage.'

-Came off the first marriage.

-'Right.'

And the rest came off the second marriage.

'Right, lovely. That's great.'

The team's lateral thinking which led them to Janet has paid off.

From her, they know three of seven paternal aunts are not entitled,

as they come off the grandfather, James Galloway's previous marriage.

With those family branches out of the picture, the team can now

focus their resources trying to trace aunts Nellie and Martha.

The office's overseas records have proved invaluable in saving them

a huge amount of research time and in finding them an heir.

I don't think everyone else, or anyone else, none of our competition

will find that very early.

They may find it, but it will probably take them a couple of days.

Because of that, the beneficiary which we're now speaking to,

I don't think will be contacted by anyone else for at least a few days.

Even better, the information she is feeding back has now alerted us

that the grandfather may have been married twice.

That again is great information.

But investigations into Joan's Aunt Hester don't end there.

The team have found a listing for a document held

at the West Sussex records office, but it is very unusual.

I found a record for a diamond wedding invitation.

This is for a Percy E Walton.

It's in 1960 - you need to be 60 years married to have a diamond anniversary.

It ties up exactly with what we've got and it gives a good area of the country.

The record says it's signed by all the guests.

Now, if it was my 60th, my diamond wedding anniversary,

I would be inviting all my brothers and sisters.

So all the females we haven't been able to find marriage notes for, we maybe able to go and have a look

at that invitation and suddenly get all of their surnames, all of their married surnames.

It could cut us down hours.

It could be a shortcut to the married names of the paternal aunts and, with these names,

they could then identify any children they may have had, who would be potential beneficiaries.

If Bob Barrett's not doing anything - I think

he was only making a simple enquiry this morning - get him over there.

It means calling on another of the travelling heir hunters and Bob Barrett's the man for this job.

We often have to go to churchyards and look at headstones and check burial records.

We visit archives at Kew to look at war records

and to look at immigration records, but it's the first time

I've had to look up a diamond wedding lunch invitation.

I think this celebration was in the 1960s,

so they probably started with prawn cocktail!

Probably chicken for main course and then Black Forest gateau,

all washed down with a nice bottle of rose.

The invitation is held at the West Sussex Records Office.

This is an unusual document for the researchers to track down, but they know from experience that unexpected

and vital clues can sometimes come from the strangest places.

Here we are.

For each record they want to view, the heir hunters must give

a unique reference number, which is what the team have tracked down.

Then it's a matter of waiting... patiently.

Thank you very much. Thanks.

I was right about the prawn cocktail.

Just a few signed names.

And a few more overleaf.

It will be a job to read the names, but Bob is used to deciphering handwritten records.

As they'd hoped, it seems the menu does contain a lot of names,

but unfortunately only a few surnames.

Will this new evidence be of any use to Grimble?

Hello, Grimble.

I've got exactly what you want.

-It was soup and prawn cocktail to start.

-Oh dear!

Actually, it's a bit disappointing.

There isn't a guest list.

All they've done is some of the guests have signed one of the menus.

-Yeah.

-Some of it is difficult to read anyway.

Um, Mabel?

As Bob feeds back the names, it becomes clear the invite doesn't contain

the key bits of information the heir hunters had been hoping for.

It's so bad it's not legible.

Unfortunately, the invite doesn't contain the married surnames of Aunts Nellie and Martha.

At the end of the day, we've got several names and whatnot, but only one of them really meant anything.

It was still worth doing, because you never know what's going to happen.

It's now nine-and-a-half hours into the case and the heir hunters still haven't signed any heirs.

The wedding invitation may not have been the breakthrough they had been hoping for,

but the researchers' persistent hard work has just rewarded them

with something from the internet that's a gem of a find.

What we're talking of here is either some amateur genealogist

who's done their own family tree and submitted all the data or, more than likely in this instance,

it's possibly someone of the Mormon belief, the Church of the Latter Day Saint.

Part of their religious beliefs is that they have to go back and trace the family history.

The Mormons have added a huge amount to the world of genealogy,

and they were the first people who started computerising stuff. We're all quite reliant on their records.

Someone has done the family tree already, and all the results

were published on the internet.

Well, we've got one coming up here - Mabel.

This is on the Brookes stem.

The Brookes stem is something we've had a huge problem in trying

to identify the births on, because of the time period.

It would have saved us an awful lot more time if we'd found this

first thing this morning rather than last thing this evening.

There is good information on here.

This late discovery provides them

with virtually all the family information

relating to Joan's Aunt Martha, who they've had trouble tracing all day.

She married a Henry Brookes,

and this branch of the family turns out to be the largest of all.

It leads them down to her five children

and on to a whole new layer of heirs,

including Joan's first cousins once removed, Eric and Barbara Brookes,

who live in the Liverpool area.

Eric has got a brother, Harry, who is now dead, and he has got a daughter, Barbara. We need to find her.

So while Grimble hits the phones...

..Paul Matthews hopes his luck with the heirs is about to change.

SAT-NAV: Take the next left turn, and then right ahead.

Hopefully we will find somebody in who will actually agree to see us.

As he arrives to knock on more doors, will he finally get to meet an heir?

What time is he due back?

-He won't be back for a few weeks. He's away at the moment.

-Oh, right.

Eric is in Dubai.

-'In Dubai?'

-Yeah. I've spoken to him.

I've got an address for him.

I've got an e-mail for him.

I told him a little bit about it. He has a sister, Barbara, as you know.

I've spoken to her and I'm on the way to see her.

-She'll be home in about 15 minutes.

-Oh, well done.

At last, the team are making contact with the heirs.

Paul Matthews has had a good result on the ground, and Grimble is having success on the phones.

Hello, Mrs Sanderson? Hello there.

Thank you for calling back. That's very kind of you.

We've been dealing with the estate of a lady called Joan Hack.

She would be a cousin to your father.

It's been a long, hard day for the heir hunters.

Their meticulous research has uncovered almost 20 legal heirs,

but they've only managed to speak to a few of them.

From that research, we think that you and your brother John

may be entitled to inherit part of the estate.

It's important for the company to see any beneficiaries that they can.

-Hello.

-Hi, Barbara. Paul Matthews from Fraser and Fraser.

-Come in.

-Pleased to meet you.

-Thank you.

-No doubt you're a bit mystified by all this.

-I am, yes.

And informing distant relatives of their unexpected windfall is usually welcome news.

-Obviously a big family, lots of work to do.

-Yes.

You will get a sum of money. It's never ever going to cost you

anything and you will only receive money.

-OK.

-And, of course, the family tree - that'll be good.

By the time you work through that lot, it will be lucky if you get a smile out of it all!

You might get 10p each! You could put it to a good cause. It will pay for a day-trip in Rhyl or somewhere.

For Fraser's to make their money, they must get signed contracts

and, with more heirs to meet and commission to win,

the case rolls into the following day and Dave Hadley is back out on the road.

It's the second day of this research in this case and I'm off to see

a Stuart Galloway, who is a cousin, once removed from the deceased.

I've got an appointment to see him at ten o'clock,

and I'm looking forward to speaking to him.

Stuart Galloway descends from Joan's Uncle Joseph and is a first cousin once removed.

-Mr Galloway?

-Yes.

-David Hadley from Fraser and Fraser.

Pleased to meet you.

-Come in.

-Thank you.

There was some suggestion that your great-grandfather was James Galloway.

Yeah, we actually named our son James, our first born.

We just liked the name, but everybody thought that we'd done it

to keep the Galloway name going, because we couldn't understand why,

when he was born, we got all sorts of gifts that came through from people we'd never heard of.

It turned out that the first born near enough in every Galloway is named James, which is quite...

-An Irish tradition.

-Yeah. But it was quite spooky because we did it

without any of that knowledge,

but a lot of people in the past said, "How thoughtful."

Sadly it was done out of...

You lapped it up nonetheless!

Oh, absolutely! Absolutely, yes.

It has been a rewarding meeting, not just for Dave Hadley, but also for heir Stuart Galloway.

I learned a lot over the last few minutes with regard to past family,

and I certainly found it very interesting and would

certainly like to follow up, now that I've started to understand the family tree of the Galloways.

-I hope everything works out OK for you.

-Thank you very much.

-Very nice meeting you.

It certainly has been a rollercoaster few hours and I'm sure the outcome will have been worth it.

While it's a positive outcome for the beneficiaries,

Neil has mixed feelings about the case as, in the end, many of the heirs signed with the competition.

The research has been exceptional. We've had hits on the Mormons.

We've picked up stuff from a diamond wedding.

We've picked up stuff in Malta.

On the downside, I don't think it is going to be that

profitable for us, because the competition has been so fierce.

There have been so many firms working at this, it is unlikely that we'll actually cover our costs.

Lonely recluse Joan Hack, whose life was never the same after her husband died,

is now bringing together a family who she may not have even realised existed.

If you would like advice

about building a family tree or making a will, go to:

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

E-mail [email protected]