Walker/Curtis Heir Hunters

Heir hunters track down families of people who've 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?

Today, on Heir Hunters, the Fraser's team

are frantically chasing blood relatives on a valuable estate.

But they're not the only ones in the hunt.

-Whilst I was there, two other companies rang up.

-'You're joking?'

But what they don't know is that this case has a shocking twist.

At that time, it was just like somebody hitting you with a cricket bat.

Plus, two sisters who thought they were only children

are brought together after a lifetime apart.

Oh, you've all steamed up!

And we'll have details of the hundreds of of thousands of pounds' worth

of unclaimed estates held by the Treasury.

Could you be a rightful heir and in line for a windfall?

Amazingly, two out of three people in Britain have no will.

If they die without one, and no family is found,

all their cash goes straight into the Government's coffers.

Last year, the Treasury advertised

millions of pounds' worth of unclaimed assets,

of which a whopping £18 million went to the Government.

Across the UK, more than 30 probate research companies

compete to find missing heirs and help them claim the cash.

One company, Fraser & Fraser, is run by family members Charles, Andrew and Neil Fraser.

In the last ten years, work carried out by Fraser & Fraser

has enabled over £100 million to be inherited.

It's a different journey every day.

We're tracing a different family and trying to find new heirs.

It never ever becomes stale and it's just one of the things I love about what we do.

It's Thursday.

The day the Treasury published the list of unclaimed estates.

In the Central London office, partner Neil thinks he's found a case worth investigating.

The first case we're working is Charlotte Walker, she dies in Barnsley earlier this year.

It looks like it's a good case cos it would appear that

she owns a property there, so value-wise could be up to 100,000-150,000.

Charlotte Walker,

known to her friends as Lottie, lived in this modest 1930s-semi,

in the mining town of Elsecar, just outside of Barnsley.

She was a colourful character in the village,

and her husband's nephew, Peter and his daughter Linda remember her fondly.

She was a jolly, happy person.

She liked meeting people.

Holidays, she adored going away.

She was the first person in the family

to fly on an aeroplane on holiday with her husband from Blackpool.

Lottie and her husband, Lydon were married in 1934,

and when he died they had been together for 49 years.

She missed Lydon, I would say every day from the day he died,

to the day she died to the day she died.

Every time you went, she always mentioned him in some way,

but she wasn't a sad person, she was always glad for the years they had.

The couple never had children of their own, but that didn't stop Charlotte sharing her love of life.

She was always young at heart.

When she was 80, she had a bouncy castle for her birthday,

cos she'd seen one on the television, and she wanted one for the children.

Before the end of the party, she actually

had to go on the bouncy castle and have a bounce with the children.

And at the age of 100, she had plenty of birthday parties.

On Lottie's 100th birthday, she got a telegram from the Queen.

And right up to a couple of days before her birthday she kept saying,

"I'm not going to be 100, I'm not going to be 100,

"and I don't want a card from her cos I'm not sending her one."

And actually, on the day, she was absolutely thrilled with it.

Charlotte was close to her family, and spent a lot of time with them,

but Fraser & Fraser had no idea of this when they started researching her family tree.

And what would become crucial in this case,

is that Peter and Linda were members of her husband's family,

not Charlotte's own blood relatives.

Neil has valued her estate at at least £100,000.

It's a lot of money, and the race is now on to find Charlotte's heirs.

The team need to work fast. At this stage of the investigation,

all that the team know about Charlotte is her name and address.

Neil has asked case manager, Tony Pledger to manage the hunt.

I'm ringing from Central London for a company of probate researchers.

And he's delegated the office leg work to Simon and Debbie.

They also need to get someone up to Barnsley to speak to Charlotte's neighbours.

Fraser's employ a dedicated team of travelling heir hunters.

They spend every Thursday ready to travel across the UK,

wherever the hunt for heirs takes them.

They collect certificates, talk to neighbours,

and ultimately, they will speak to heirs.

I'm trying to speak to Lilian.

With all the travelling researchers who live in the North already on other jobs,

Neil is having to look further afield.

He is calling Sussex-based, Bob Smith.

So, go to Barnsley, yes?

-Up North, yes.

-Sorry, mate. Barnsley.

It's a long drive. The case is Charlotte Walker nee Bott.

-Take care, mate.

-Cheers, Neil. Bye.

Here I live in deepest Sussex and I've been asked to go Yorkshire, to Barnsley.

Never been there before, so it's quite exciting.

It promises to be a long day for Bob.

Barnsley is a 215-mile journey north.

Bob's got to go all the way round the M25 and up the M1

before he can get to Barnsley.

While Bob heads north, the team in the office are trying to get a head start.

Researcher, Debbie, is scouring the birth records in the Barnsley area.

Neil thinks that this case will be interesting to work.

Charlotte dies in 2009, but she's born in 1908,

so she's over 100 years old when she dies, and this,

there's not many cases which are over 100.

Using birth records they have on file for the Barnsley area,

Debbie has traced Charlotte's parents' address in 1908.

She's now looking at the 1911 census, hoping to find Charlotte's family.

The census is a national survey conducted every ten years,

it lists the names, ages and genders

of all the people living at every address in the UK.

The Census will tell Debbie if Charlotte,

who was three at the time, had any siblings living with her.

And it looks like Debbie has struck gold.

I've just found the family, hopefully,

and it's a case of piecing it together now and seeing if there's any more issue.

Now, the team can begin to put together a family tree.

Heir hunters use trees like treasure maps,

taking the family back generation-by-generation

until they find blood relatives in line to inherit.

So, apparently there was five children for the 1911,

three still living and two are dead.

Charlotte's parents were William Bott, a miner, and Sarah Whitehouse.

She was the youngest of five girls, but only three,

Kate, Lily and Charlotte herself had survived into adulthood.

As Charlotte had no children, her sisters Kate and Lily's descendants

would be near kin and in line to inherit.

Case manager, Simon Grosvenor is trying to find out if Lily and Kate had any children.

Let's see if we can find marriages for the two sisters

and, if we can, find then deaths and children and then get the certificates to show that

the two we found are indeed sisters of Charlotte,

and that the marriages we've got for them are right.

But with an estate of at least £100,000,

the competition will be fierce.

So the team will also look at cousins.

While they can't rule out there aren't any nieces and nephews,

Tony will go back in the family tree to look for brothers and sisters for Charlotte's mum and dad.

His aim is to find living cousins who might be heirs.

We're speculating on whether or not we've got the mother of the deceased in the 1891 or we haven't.

If we have, then she's possibly got nine brothers and sisters.

Simon is hoping to find these people.

William Henry up here.

On the Census, he has a brother James and a sister Elizabeth.

Charlotte's father, William had a brother James, who went on to have four children.

Florence, John, Leonard and James.

They would have been Charlotte's first cousins.

Unfortunately, they have passed away, but their children might still be alive.

Simon has found someone he thinks might be John's son.

He is called Alan Bott and he's living in Nottinghamshire, somewhere.

Hello, sorry to disturb you, Mr Bott?

Hello, my name is Tony Pledger and I work for a company called Fraser & Fraser.

What we do is we trace missing heirs,

and I'm hoping that your father would have been John James William Bott.

What I would like to do is make an arrangement

with somebody to come and see you later on today.

But Mr Bott lives in Nottinghamshire and the only travelling heir hunter available is Bob,

who is on his way to Barnsley.

Hello, Bob.

-Hello, Tone.

-Where you going to?

I've just put in Barnsley.

Try taking Barnsley out and putting Newark, Nottinghamshire.

Oh, right. OK.

Two and a half hours after I've left my home, I'm to head towards Newark,

which is in Nottinghamshire, rather than Barnsley, and go and see this guy.

See what he knows about the family and the deceased,

and hopefully get a signature.

Back at the office, Tony knows he's taking a calculated risk.

We're not ruling out near kin, but we do have positive cousins,

so we're going to go and see those.

At the same time, we are trying to establish the near kin aspect of it.

If Charlotte's sisters did have any children,

their claim will take precedence over any cousins.

The heir hunters must pray their decision

to send Bob to Nottinghamshire won't cost them an heir in Barnsley.

Still to come, the heir hunters are having to be inventive.

He's using the name Winsper and he's just picked up people

in the right area in the phone book.

From the sounds of it he's got quite lucky.

In the search for missing relatives,

the heir hunters often uncover families torn apart by separation.

For Jeremy Ford of Hoopers, one of the greatest rewards

is when his work brings a family back together.

When we work on these matters, it's not, at times, just about

the money, or the windfall or the financial gain.

There can be a lot more to it than that, and we do from time-to-time,

experience cases when heirs do specifically request

to be linked up with family members.

But when it involves a parent who has abandoned their children

or started a new family, it can be especially difficult to come to terms with.

This is the story of two women who both grew up thinking they were only children.

But the heir hunters research discovered they had the same dad.

They were half-sisters.

That was my mum and dad in 1944 when they got married.

Shirley Hughes, seen here with her Aunt Marjorie, was three when her father

left the family home in Liverpool to work in the West Midlands, and she never heard from him again.

I can vaguely remember him when I was little,

but I don't know a great deal about him.

No-one else seems to know much.

The people that could answer those questions have both passed away, my mum and auntie.

So I have to rely on aunties and uncles to try and fill in the gaps.

But this one is a better one of your dad, don't you think?

Obviously, I'd wonder why they split up.

I didn't know whether perhaps it was because of work, or whether there

was anything else that was involved, but it was just kept quiet.

No-one would discuss it.

150-miles to the south in Tipton, West Midlands,

Joyce Coley had grown up the apple of her father's eye.

My dad was what you would call a gentle giant.

He was almost 6ft 4, 19-and-a-half-stone, he was quite a big chap,

and he was a real softie.

He always bought me everything I ever wanted.

Never questioned anything.

But when her father died suddenly,

when she was 15, her world changed radically.

It was like losing a limb.

He was dad, a perfect dad.

And you couldn't want for anything more from him.

And with her father's passing she missed siblings to share her memories with.

I grew up on my own,

I had a step-sister and a step-brother, but they married

and were gone by the time I came on the scene, so I was pretty much alone.

But the sisters were about to find out that they weren't alone.

200-miles to the south in London, probate research company Hoopers

had begun a case tracing heirs to the estate of Cyril Curtis.

He had died in Great Yarmouth in 2008,

leaving a £23,000 estate, but no will.

Cyril was 80 years old when he died.

Towards the end of his life, he was very reclusive.

The heir hunters had little to work with. Jeremy Ford led the case.

It's a very much a blank canvas scenario,

no idea what became of the deceased and we were able to establish

he never married or indeed had any children,

and was a child of Frederick and Helen Curtis,

who married also in Great Yarmouth,

and we started piecing the jigsaw together.

The researchers were quick to find Cyril's brothers and sisters.

Father Fred had been married twice and Cyril

was one of his six children.

If any of Cyril's brothers and sisters

or their offspring are alive, they would be heirs.

We established that one of Cyril's brothers was a Leonard Edgar Curtis.

It was while the team were investigating Leonard that they came

across a family secret which had been buried for more than 50 years.

We did trace the family, and that brought us on to

tracing a daughter by the name of Joyce,

who later became Joyce Coley, whose mother was Emily,

and we established that her parents never married.

It seems that in 1956, Leonard had a child, Joyce,

with his partner Emily Shepherd.

Emily had two previous children, Jill and Robert.

But as they weren't legally adopted by Leonard,

they were not heirs to Cyril.

Joyce, on the other hand, was Cyril's niece and therefore an heir.

Silly lad.

There we go. There we go.

The news of her Uncle Cyril and her father's family came as quite a surprise for Joyce

as she'd never known much about her father's background.

I had no idea about Cyril, or any other brothers or sisters.

Nobody had ever mentioned him so he was...

it was a total shock to hear about such things, especially at my age.

Although she was brought up by Leonard,

Joyce knew very little about her father's past.

I wasn't allowed to ask questions.

If I did, at any time ask, you know, if I'd got any uncles or aunties

or anything on my dad's side, the question was never answered. Never.

Although Joyce had been located, the case was far from closed.

Before being presented to the Treasury, every case must be thoroughly investigated.

Through the course of the research, another bigger secret emerged.

As a result of digging around a little bit more,

regarding the death of Leonard,

we established that the administrator of the estate was a lady by the name

of Hilda Curtis, and we thought well, who is this person?

So, we what we had to do next was try and fit her in.

We did establish that Leonard did marry Hilda.

This marriage took place in 1944.

From that marriage, we carried out a birth search and we established

that he did have a child from that marriage,

a daughter by the name of Shirley.

Prior to meeting Emily and having Joyce, Leonard Curtis

had married Hilda Tomlinson, whom he'd never divorced.

Together in 1948, they had a daughter, Shirley.

Like Joyce, she too was a niece to Cyril, and an heir.

There we were in the situation,

we had found Leonard's marriage, a daughter from the marriage,

we had evidence of a subsequent relationship

and a daughter from that relationship.

And we had the feeling that neither of them knew of the other's existence.

Jeremy knew to proceed with caution in breaking the news.

It's quite an emotional and involved situation,

they find out about their Uncle Cyril,

they never even knew of this person,

and they found out that they did have a half sibling.

For Shirley, the news that she had family was very exciting.

When Jeremy spoke to me from Hoopers and he told me about Joyce,

I said I'd like to meet her perhaps one day, and he did say to me that if I wanted to,

I could write a letter and he would forward it on to her.

I didn't hesitate. I just wrote a letter,

probably a lot of garbage was in it, but I wrote who I was,

that I was married with four children,

and that we both shared the same dad, and it would be lovely to hear from her

when she felt the time was right.

Shirley wrote her a letter in September,

but as days, weeks and then months passed Shirley heard nothing.

You're waiting and every time the phone went

I'd think it was her ringing,

the post went, the letter box would go

and I'd keep looking for a letter.

Christmas came and I was looking for a Christmas card.

In Tipton, Joyce was trying to come to terms with what she had learned.

When I first got the letter from Shirley,

it was a mixture of emotions, it was excitement,

it was fear, it was everything you could ever think of.

It was an excitement, I wanted to see her,

but I didn't want to see her.

It was so many years, and I just wondered how she would accept me.

What she expected of me,

I know what I expected of her, I wanted a big sister.

The big sister I never had.

For Shirley, family is everything.

He has his own name badge, don't you?

She gave up work a few years ago

to help out with son Tony and granddaughter Jennifer.

I never had a large family when I was little.

It was just me on my own and I always said I'd like to have a big family one day.

See you later. Bye.

See you later.

It was March, and after six months of waiting for a response from Joyce,

Shirley wondered whether the chance to know more

about her family might be slipping away.

I've just left it up to her, but it would be nice to hear from her,

even it was just to say, to acknowledge,

"I received your letter, but I don't think we should go further."

In Tipton, Joyce was struggling to come to terms with things.

I will contact her, but it's getting straight in my mind

what's gone on in my life.

I want to get that straight first, and then I can move on.

You know,

it's a big step. It's a real big step.

I will do it.

I kept the card that she sent me,

and I kept it on the fireplace for five months,

and I kept picking it up, and I put it down,

and I'd looked at the phone number that was on the bottom,

and should I contact her, shouldn't I?

I decided one afternoon, I'd been to work and I'd had a rough day

and I came back and I was sitting there and I thought, "Do it".

PHONE RINGS

I was excited when I answered the phone to her and realised it was her

because I thought, "At last, she's acknowledging me,"

and as the conversation went on,

she seemed to relax a little bit more, and she lost her nervousness.

The sisters arranged to meet in a hotel in late March.

That cab journey was nerve-racking.

My stomach was all knotted and I didn't know what to expect,

I didn't know what she'd be like, whether she'd be tall, or what.

Neither Shirley nor Joyce had even seen a photograph of the other.

I was sitting in the hotel foyer, waiting for Shirley to come in,

I'd got butterflies and stomach ache and I thought I've made a mistake.

But after all those years apart,

would the sisters really be able to connect?

Still to come...

If the sisters find common ground, will they be able to bury the ghosts of the past?

Why was it such a secret?

I don't understand.

I don't think I ever will and I don't think

I'll ever find out the truth,

but it would be nice to ask those questions now, I just wish he was here.

For every case that is solved,

there are still thousands that remain a mystery.

Currently, over 3,000-names drawn from across the country

are on the Treasury's unsolved case list.

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

the rightful heirs are out there somewhere.

Today, we've got two cases heir hunters have, so far, failed to solve.

Could you be the key?

Could you be in line for a pay out?

Kathleen Marion Coomer died in Dartmouth on 4th February 2006.

Was Kathleen a friend or neighbour of yours?

Could you even be related to her and entitled to her legacy?

William Daly passed away on 4th December 2004 in Highgate Hill, London.

So far, every attempt to find his rightful heir has failed.

If no relatives can be found,

his money will go to the Government, but could it be meant for you?

If the names William Daly or Kathleen Coomer mean anything to you

or someone you know, you could have a fortune coming your way.

One name that stood out for the on the Treasury's list of unclaimed estates

was that of Charlotte Walker, who died leaving a small fortune of at least £100,000.

A popular character in the Peak village of Elsecar, Barnsley,

she loved children, but sadly never had any of her own.

Before she died, Charlotte reached a full century.

Her late husband's great niece remembers her birthday.

She was up really early, and she was waving at people

in the street and shouting "Hello, I'm 100 today", and she had a party

and all the family came and bouncy castle, we had a barbecue.

She wanted a modern birthday.

She sat out with her rug round her, watching the children,

until she actually fell asleep outside because she was so tired.

But she absolutely revelled in the whole day.

Sadly, Charlotte died just five months later.

But there is a shocking twist in this tale.

Usually, when a name appears on the Treasury list, it's because there's no will.

But Charlotte did make a will.

She had left her entire estate to her husband's family in Barnsley

and she'd appointed her nephew Peter as the executor of the will.

We took it along to the solicitors and gave it to the solicitors.

She said "Oh, yes, we have got the deeds to the house,

"hang on a minute, it's only got one signature on it, this will,

"and you're not direct descendants, so it's nothing to do with you."

So at that time, it was just like somebody hitting you with a cricket bat.

To make a legal will, of course, you have to have two witnesses

and they have to be able to read the will and witness your signature

and sign it at the same time, so it is vital to not only make a will,

but to make a will properly and the only way to be ensured of doing that

is to do it through a qualified solicitor.

With the will declared invalid, Charlotte's estate of at least £100,000

has now been advertised on the Treasury's list of unclaimed estates.

And right now, the heir hunters are desperately trying

to trace her blood relatives to inherit.

Hello, sorry to trouble you, Mr Bott?

And after five hours on the case they have made contact

with a paternal cousin once removed, Alan Bott,

and in Nottinghamshire, travelling heir hunter Bob Smith has managed to see him.

-Good morning.

-It's Robert Smith from Fraser & Fraser.

I have an appointment to see you. Can I come in?

-Yes.

-Thank you very much.

-Do you remember the lady Charlotte that we are talking about?

-Yes.

She lived near, in a huge Victorian house,

-sat in its own grounds.

-Right.

And the house she lived in, her standard of living,

and furniture and all that, she was obviously

a bookmaker's wife, she was reasonably well-off.

But she married a bookmaker?

I heard that from my father.

This news is very exciting.

Could it be that the estate is worth substantially more than £100,000?

The heir hunters won't know for sure until the heirs submit the claim.

Back in the office, researcher Debbie has

been tracing relatives through the Census information

and it seems there's no shortage of cousins.

It was obviously a very fertile family.

On one stem alone she has one,

two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven.

So the deceased has 11 cousins on one stem out of seven.

Meanwhile, senior researcher Simon

has ordered up copies of Charlotte's sisters' wills,

and as they feared, there might be a niece or nephew.

Probates for the two sisters of the deceased,

who we don't think had any children,

the wills would seem to suggest they don't have any children.

There is however mention of a great niece,

which would suggest that there might be a great niece of the deceased.

This news could really put a spanner in the works.

With their travelling heir hunter already visiting a potential heir,

they have no-one on the ground to investigate this lead.

Back in Nottinghamshire, there's an unwelcome surprise.

There's been a call from a competing heir hunter, but Alan is not having it.

First come, first served.

I'm not interested in anything else.

I've got enough bloody worries without fighting between companies.

Having left the paperwork for Alan to consider,

Bob phones the news into Tony.

Whilst I was there two other companies rang up.

-'You're joking!'

-No.

But I was told that if Mr Bott has agreed

he will sign with me, he will sign with me.

Back in London, Tony knows that even with the competition hot on their heels,

they can't afford to take short cuts.

There are other companies looking at it, I know,

so we do try to speed up a bit,

but you still have to make sure you're doing it properly.

We don't know where it will lead to.

Sure enough, there's another development.

Simon has confirmed that the grand niece mentioned

in Charlotte's sister's will is not a blood relative.

We can stop panicking, because...

..the husband's niece is a Mrs Greenfield,

and Marie Senior, who's a great niece, is born as Greenfield in 1942,

so she's the husband's niece, not the deceased's niece,

in which case we're back to cousins.

Now the team know for sure they have taken the right track,

finding cousins and signing Alan Bott.

And just as well.

So far they have found round 20 heirs on Charlotte's father's side alone.

Tony is concentrating on the maternal side of the tree.

Charlotte's mother Sarah had seven brothers and sisters.

The team have traced a marriage record for her sister Esther to a William Winsper.

It's an unusual name.

You hear us talking about good bad names all the time.

The good name, we can do a lot more things with.

We can gamble, that's what Tony is doing. He's taking a total gamble.

He's got the phone books, he's using the name Winsper,

and he's just picked up people in the right area in the phone book,

and from the sounds of it he's got quite lucky.

We think the Winspers, provided it's the right Winspers, might have an entitlementment.

It's the end of the day and the team have contacted

over half of the heirs on Charlotte's father's side,

and some on the maternal side.

But while Charlotte's great age had been useful to begin with,

it's now making things more difficult.

What's making this job hard, and this family hard,

is the age of the deceased where she is over 100,

the birth rate at the time when the top line has been born

is much higher than it would be on a usual case.

And as the weeks go by, Tony is left counting heirs.

54, 55, 56. 56. Could easily be 60, 70 heirs on it, eventually.

With so many heirs, it's likely their share

of the £100,000 will be small, but still a pleasant windfall.

Many are distant relations.

The beneficiaries we're locating now,

their grandparents are cousins of the deceased.

So you know, they're cousins, but three times removed.

One of the last heirs they contact is on the maternal side.

Charlotte's mother Esther had a grandson called Colin.

He is Charlotte's first cousin once removed.

The news of his inheritance has brought up mixed emotions.

I never knew Charlotte Walker.

It's a bit sad somebody leaving me money that I'd never even met.

We've been thinking about doing a family tree for some time,

so once we knew the name we started to delve into the family tree.

That's Charlotte's mum's sister.

Colin's already got an idea of what do with his share of the £100,000.

If there is any money forthcoming, it would be nice to put it towards a trip,

and find out exactly what happened to Charlotte

and the rest of the family.

Without a valid will, under intestate law

only a blood relative can act on behalf of the deceased.

Charlotte's family through marriage were told

that even though they had known her all their life,

they couldn't even carry out her last wishes.

Being told we were not Lottie's family,

when all us life we'd considered Lottie as family,

was very hard.

My difficulty at the time was I'd lost Lottie

a few days previously,

and then on the day my dad came home and told me that,

I felt like I'd lost her twice.

Because I'd lost a right to call her my auntie somehow,

and it took me a long time to get

beyond that, and to recognise for myself that she was my auntie

and nobody could take that away from me.

We've got the memories, that's it.

We'll enjoy them.

Let it be a warning to everybody -

things are not that simple.

As we've just seen, the impact of loved-ones dying intestate

can be devastating on the family left behind,

but sometimes there is a silver lining.

On rare occasions, family who never even knew of each other's existence can be brought together.

For most, this is welcome news,

but it can be the start of an emotional journey.

We always have to be very careful when we approach heirs

in any investigation, because we never know

what we're going to open up or uncover.

Cyril Curtis died on February 9th 2008 in Great Yarmouth,

leaving an estate of £23,000.

He had no family around him.

So when Jeremy Ford of heir hunting company Hoopers

tracked down four entitled heirs to his £23,000 estate

they were surprised to hear of Cyril, but that wasn't the only shock.

Two of those heirs were nieces Joyce Coley and Shirley Hughes.

Are we crossing here or walking down?

They were both daughters of Cyril's brother Leonard,

buy two different mothers and therefore half-sisters,

but they'd never known of the other's existence.

I went silent with shock.

And excitement really, that the thought that I had family out there.

Which is strange. Never met any of the family at all.

Never knew who they was, didn't know they existed.

Leonard Curtis left his wife Hilda and daughter Shirley

when Shirley was three-years-old.

He went on to meet Emily Shepherd,

and while they never married, they did have a daughter Joyce,

who Leonard was father to until his death.

After an initial period of coming to terms with the news,

Joyce agreed to meet Shirley on neutral ground.

Neither sister had seen a photo of each other.

When I was sitting in the hotel foyer waiting for

Shirley to come in, I had got butterflies and stomach ache.

I had everything you could ever have and anxieties that were running through my head.

I thought I'd made a mistake.

Hello!

It's lovely to meet you.

INDISTINCT MUFFLED VOICES

You've all steamed up.

Thank you. I brought you one, as well.

Thank you so much. Something to remind you, to be reminded by.

Oh, dear.

I'm so grateful for this.

You know, it's just..

I just wish we could have met sooner.

Looking at you, we're so alike.

-We are.

-It's unbelievable.

We're so alike.

My colour's out of a bottle!

Yes, well, I need mine doing now, but that, that's Dad, our dad.

-That's him.

-Was that taken in Llandudno.

It was Wales.

Gosh, I can't believe that. It's lovely.

And that's how I was always dressed.

Just like that. Constantly.

After their first meeting, the sisters have kept in touch,

but they are both still wrestling with a mixture of emotions.

The last ten months have been the most amazing time of my life.

Suddenly to be thrust into this new family, you know, and there's lots

of new people, and you're learning about them every single day, and it's...

..it's been amazing, it's been a real rollercoaster of a ride. It really has.

We've seen quite a bit of each other since we first met.

We met up in Llandudno, they were on holiday in Rhyl.

So we met up there for the day and had a nice day,

and then they came here and stayed for a few days.

But along with the joy of discovering each other,

it's also been an unsettling time.

When we do start the process of trying to bring heirs together,

we're aware of the great many sensitivities involved,

particularly when the relationship is very close,

as in the case of Joyce and Shirley,

and of course there's a lot of anxieties involved

and the whole process has to be delicately considered.

Of course, there's a number of emotional hurdles that have to be cleared.

Joyce has returned to where her father's ashes

were scattered 30 years ago.

Until her father died just before her 15th birthday,

she was the apple of his eye.

Joyce was devoted to him.

But a year on, the news that the father she worshipped

for all those years

had abandoned her half-sister Shirley has left Joyce questioning the past.

If I could speak to my dad now, I would ask him why he did what he did,

why did he set up a new life?

Why did I come along?

Why did he abandon Shirley the way he did?

And I would love to ask him why he did that, why was it such a secret?

I don't understand.

I don't think I ever will and I don't think I'll ever find out the truth,

but it would be nice to ask those questions now, I just wish he was here.

I can't understand why dad would cover up so much, really.

He left my mum and I.

As far as I know he went to work in West Bromwich,

and that was the reason he left, was through work.

Every time I mentioned him I was told to be quiet.

No-one would talk about him and I could never understand why.

I thought, "If he's just left for work, for a job,

"there must be something more to it than what there was."

All that Shirley knows is that he left

and some time later had another daughter.

There's eight years between us, and in all those eight years,

there must have been something that's...

..he's hidden from even perhaps her mum, we don't know.

Or did her mum know everything?

It's just one of those secrets, I don't think we'll ever find out.

For most of the 19th century, divorce was a difficult,

expensive and scandalous process.

Perhaps the plain fact is that Leonard could

not find the courage to tell his two separate families the truth.

Well, of course dad isn't here now,

and there's just me and Shirley now, and we finally found one another,

and we're starting a new life together as best we can.

If you would like to find out more

about how to build a family tree or write a will, go to bbc.co.uk.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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