Somers/Buck Heir Hunters

It's early morning and heir hunters are racing to find heirs

to a £100,000 estate.

The ball's rolling now.

There are no guarantees of success.

If in his will he leaves it all to the cats' home,

then it's the cats' home that will be getting the money.

They're determined to find long-lost relatives

who may have no idea they're in line for a windfall.

Could they be knocking at your door?

On today's show...

We're not 100% sure we've got the right family.

A misspelled surname sends the heir hunters off course.

We're fishing with a very big net in a very deep ocean.

Will they crack the right combination?

And the heir hunters help to unravel the wartime drama

that split a family apart.

The last time I saw Olive was in 1941.

Plus how you could be entitled to unclaimed estates

where beneficiaries still need to be found.

Could you be in line for an unexpected windfall?

An estimated 300,000 people die every year in the UK

without leaving a will.

If no relatives can be found, any money that's left behind

will go into government coffers

and last year, those coffers were boosted by a staggering £12 million.

But there are over 30 specialist firms competing

to stop this happening.

They're called heir hunters

and they make it their business to track down relatives

and help them claim their rightful inheritance.

I love the fact that I can put families back together.

I can reunite people.

I can tell them secret histories about their own family

which they don't know about themselves.

It's first thing Thursday morning.

The Treasury's weekly list of unclaimed estates,

which can range from £5,000 to many millions,

has just been released.

There's a big list out this morning. It's got 18 cases.

We're seeing if any of them are worth anything.

I've got one council house so far, ex-council.

They all need enquiries.

The entries are being investigated by staff at Fraser and Fraser,

the UK's largest heir hunting firm,

to see if there are any of value.

But early enquiries aren't proving fruitful,

much to the frustration of partner Neil Fraser.

There's a huge list but nothing with any decent bits in it.

One council house or ex-council house,

which is worth less than £100,000.

Everything else looks rubbish.

The Treasury's list doesn't reveal the value of estates,

so it's up to heir hunters to estimate their worth.

As they usually work on commission,

picking the right case can be a gamble.

So they decide to go with the only entry Neil thinks is of value,

the estate of James Joseph Somers, who they think owned his own home.

Case manager David Milchard calls for back-up.

You want to go down to Ashford?

Kent.

Yeah, it's James Joseph Somers.

The company employs a network of regional heir hunters

who are on standby every Thursday.

These researchers provide a vital role,

making door-to-door enquiries across the country

in the race to find and sign up heirs.

Bob Smith has been sent from his regular patch in Surrey

to discover if James Somers did indeed live at the Kent address.

Today, we're off to Ashford in Kent.

Our deceased is a James Somers but he died in Ashford two years ago.

It's quite important to get along to the address

and make enquiries with the neighbours.

And I've got no doubt I won't be the only one

that's knocking on his door or making telephone calls.

If the team's estimate

that James Somers' estate is worth £100,000 is correct,

competition will be fierce.

Neil's team needs to stay ahead but they've hit a stumbling block.

He's got a birth of a James J Somers in Ireland.

They've found records for two James Somers

but they don't know which is the correct one.

At the moment, I'm looking for a Joseph Somers,

which could be the birth of a deceased in 1940

but unfortunately, we've got two possible births for the deceased,

so we need to work out which one's right.

As the Treasury's list only gives the name and place of death,

they need to be completely sure if the entry is for a James Somers born in Blean in Kent

or one born in Ireland.

We can't find anything that's fitting in with what we've got here

and we're not 100% sure we've got the right family, anyway, so...

Without hard facts, the team's going round in circles.

James Somers was also known as Jimmy

and died in 2008 aged 68.

He's fondly missed by close friends like Timmy Russell.

We was good friends but obviously I'm quite a bit younger than Jimmy.

He was friends of the family, you know, ie, my father

and that's how I got to know Jimmy, through my father.

Jimmy was a very well-dressed person,

very smart appearance,

quite a bit of confidence about him, self-belief, you know.

Quite often Jimmy would be in a suit and tie.

He was an intelligent fella.

A lot of it was probably self-educated, as well.

He'd like, as I say, always have his head in a book

at some time throughout the day, you know.

Jimmy Somers worked as a nurse at his local hospital

and in his spare time, he was passionate about watching sport.

Jimmy's interests were pretty much sport orientated.

He liked his horse racing and he used to have a little bet

quite regular, once a day, probably.

He liked his boxing and he used to be keen on that.

I boxed myself when I was younger

and Jimmy used to come and watch from time to time.

Yeah, he was very much into his sport.

He pretty much kept himself to himself.

He had some close friends but that was about it -

there was probably a handful.

Back at the office, none of the groundwork is proving conclusive

and case manager David is worried.

We don't know if we have got the right birth

and what we got is not working out very well.

I'm also searching for some hair to pull out.

In Ashford, on James' street, Bob needs to get any information he can

to drive the investigation forward.

He also needs to confirm that James Somers did own the property there.

-Did you ever speak to him at all?

-A few times.

There's a few guys up the Crusader pub would know him.

-That know him?

-Yeah.

-Right, oh, OK.

That would be a good call for you.

-He didn't mention family?

-No.

Hello. Sorry to trouble you.

I don't know if I've got the right address.

-I'm making enquiries about Mr Somers.

-Oh, right.

-Did he own the property?

-Yes, he did.

-He did.

-Right. How old was he? Sorry!

-He must have been 70 this year.

70 this year. Right. When did he move in?

-The same time as me.

-Same as you? And he'd been there all that time?

And he never mentioned any family at all?

Bob's efforts have paid off. James Somers did own his own house,

which means it's probably a valuable estate.

-Hi, mate.

-Hello, mate.

Yeah, I've done the enquiry of James Joseph Somers, yeah?

-He's aged about 70...

-Yeah?

He's lived in this area a long time.

-Yeah, we've got a birth for him in Blean in 1940.

-OK.

We're having problems. We can't identify a really good birth.

We can't find one for James J.

The birth I gave you is a plain James

but if it is right, we've not got very far with it.

-Yeah.

-Now, we need to get that birth checked...

Yeah.

..for the 8th October 1940.

-I'll have to hot-foot to Tunbridge Wells, Dave, because...

-OK, then.

..they only do priorities before 10.30, I think.

-Yeah, OK, you get there as quick as you can.

-OK.

-All right.

-I'll speak to you later.

-Cheers, mate.

-Bye, mate. Well done.

-All right.

Bob's off to the register office, 45 minutes away.

If he can get the right birth certificate here,

it will be crucial to the investigation.

In the meantime, the team needs to renew their efforts

to pinpoint the right birth for James Somers in 1940.

Can you think of anything?

They're still working with two options.

It's question of whether that right birth was in Blean or in Ireland.

The one in Ireland is a year out, so the one in Blean looks better

and since he died in Kent,

it seems likely the birth in Kent will turn out to be right.

Research into the Kent birth has revealed

there was another Somers born on the same day

and in the same district.

If the birth we have is right,

it appears that James had a twin.

So if we phone her up,

she can tell us whether or not we've got the right person.

It looks like a step in the right direction

but they can't find any contact details for James' twin.

They need to find the names of his parents to continue.

Somers to Brothey, 1940.

And Debbie soon makes an important breakthrough.

Yeah.

She may have found a maiden name for James Somers' mother.

Did you put this address in?

They now have something to go on

and if they can create a family tree for the maternal side, the Brotheys,

it may lead them to heirs.

But at this stage, it's all guesswork.

Joe has come to the conclusion that it's Irish,

so we have it wrong.

And now the Brothey name is causing problems.

The Brotheys we're looking at at the moment,

it appears to be the maiden family of James Joseph Somers

but we can't find a marriage of Brothey to Somers

or indeed a marriage of Brothey to anything.

So we don't know her Christian name or the father's Christian name,

so we're playing with variants of the spelling of Brothey

to see if we can try and find something that will connect.

It's possible that the spelling is wrong and that's why we can't find it.

It seems like this heir hunt is one step forward and two steps back.

If there is a spelling mistake on the register,

it will throw the heir hunters off track.

We're fishing, is the only way of describing it...

We're scraping the barrel!

..with a very big net in a very deep ocean,

as far as I can see.

The fact that the team's also looking into a possible Irish connection

is taking up valuable time.

The research hasn't been the easiest on this case

and that's because we're dealing with two jurisdictions,

two different sets of records.

There's the English and Welsh records,

which we have access to here in the office,

and then we've also got some Irish records

and those are a different index,

a different set of records, which we have to research through.

Some of our confusion is because of the two jurisdictions.

If it was all in one place, all in Ireland,

or if it was all in England and Wales, it would be a lot easier.

So until Bob Smith gets to the register office in Tunbridge Wells

and can confirm or rule out the Kent birth,

the team is stumped.

We're not getting anything at the moment.

I just want to get some certificates.

David has appointed a Dublin-based researcher

to do some digging on the birth in Ireland for James Somers

and he's just been told of a potential lead.

My guy in Ireland, in Dublin, has found a birth of a James J Somers.

It's not in 1940, it's 1941, that's when it's registered,

but in Ireland, lots of unusual things happen,

so it's a possibility he could be our guy.

If it is, he's identified him having a brother

and we've got a current address for the brother

in County Kilkenny.

Could this mean the Irish birth is the right one after all?

Oh, hello, there. Is Mr Somers there, please?

David gets straight on the phone to the brother,

who could be James Somers' heir.

I'm not sure if I have the right family or not.

Did you have any other brothers at all?

Jim. What happened to him?

He's in Dublin, is he?

OK, fine.

He never went to England, did he?

No, OK.

None of them went to England, right, OK.

OK, much obliged to you. Thank you. Bye-bye.

It's not the result he was hoping for

but the upside is, having ruled out the Irish birth,

they're down to one line of enquiry.

Right, the Irish one is out. He's alive and kicking in Dublin.

The team's now concentrating on the Kent birth for James Somers

but without the details of his parents from a birth certificate,

they're no closer to solving this case,

which could be worth up to £100,000.

Coming up. Could James' name not be James after all?

And might this be the key to cracking the case?

What about Seamus? Could that be James?

Sometimes, the heir hunters deal with stories

of families separated back in a time when relatives didn't have the means

to find each other again.

Our next story is one such case.

Celtic Research is a small heir-hunting company

based in Wales and London.

The Cardiff office is headed up by regional researcher Phil.

In January 2010, he had a reason to dig out an unsolved case,

which had been gathering dust on the shelf.

This was one of those cases I'd been working on previously,

pulled out the file again because it had been highlighted again

on the unsolved unclaimed list

that Bona Vacantia gives out and I thought, let me try it again.

Phil had drawn a blank on the case of Olive Buck,

who died in 2007.

But a new development might give him a lead.

She was born in the Bath area.

Bath had recently put their registrations online

and I managed to find her on that

and then that got the ball rolling.

The new lead helped Phil begin to piece together

a picture of Olive's life.

Olive Marjorie Buck was born in the historic spa town of Bath,

where she continued to live all her life.

Olive married Henry Stacey Buck in 1937

and was married for 46 years.

After his death, she led a reclusive life

and passed away in a retirement home at the age of 93.

Now he had new leads, Phil began researching the case,

which looked like it could be worth up to £15,000.

As Olive had no children, Phil needed to research her parents,

which might lead to siblings or cousins.

From the census records and from the registry office records

I established the deceased's mother was Mabel Louisa Costello.

Phil was making fast progress.

He learnt that Olive's parents were Mabel Costello and Wilfred Hooper.

She had two sisters, Phyllis, who died at the age of 20 in 1930,

and Vera, who'd lived to be 85.

Neither had any children.

After I'd established there were no children from the brothers and sisters,

that then leads me to go to the grandparents

to look for uncles and aunties of the deceased,

and that's on both sides of the family,

the maternal and the paternal side of the family.

Research into Olive's father's family, the Hoopers,

soon showed there were no descendants.

So Phil needed to retrace his steps

and concentrate on Olive's grandparents on her mother's side.

Records soon produced a name for her grandfather,

Michael Costello.

There were Costellos in all parts of the country.

Costellos are not necessarily commonplace in one particular area

but there are Costellos around and that was the difficulty.

It has here he hit a stumbling block.

There were Costellos popping up in England, Scotland and Ireland.

There was a lot of Costellos.

The other key factor was the fact that they moved around so much

and then spread across the country so much,

and not just across the UK - overseas, as well.

Phil scoured census records going back to 1881.

Was there a common link between these Costellos

that would prove a family connection?

We can establish whether you're on the right track or not

because you end up with the same occupation, possibly,

or a very similar occupation.

Then you'd check for age, the age is the same,

married to the same person, or maybe even living at the same address.

Sometimes it works. The majority of times it works, sometimes it doesn't

because they might change occupation.

After a month of research, Phil found a Michael Costello

born into a family who seemed to have the same job down the generations.

He turned out to be a military person

and they don't normally change their occupation.

Was it a coincidence?

This Michael Costello had moved from Scotland to Bath

and he was in the Yeomanry.

He'd had seven children, including one called Mabel,

who Phil believed was Olive's mother.

If Phil's hunch was right,

it looked like Olive's grandfather had been quite famous.

Records show Michael Costello's funeral in Bath

was an extremely grand affair.

To have a funeral that size would be quite rare

but he was obviously very well known in the city.

So he got the full panoply of a military funeral,

the unit marching through the city,

three volleys for the Trinity over the grave.

Unusual.

But obviously the city and his friends and his unit

felt he deserved it.

In fact, the send-off reflected Michael Costello's illustrious career

as a military bandmaster.

Back at the turn of the 19th century,

these military band performances were the rock concerts of their day,

with the popular marching music being played

in the main bandstands of the city.

To have become bandmaster of quite a prestigious unit...

I mean, the North Somerset Yeomanry was a very well-regarded unit.

That says something about his authority, his experience

and his personality.

But the onset of the First World War

saw the roles of these volunteer servicemen and their bandmaster

change dramatically.

On the 4th August 1914, the day that war was declared,

the yeoman of the North Somerset Yeomanry were embodied,

that is they were brought together as a unit in camp.

I think by that time they would have lost the requirement

that they volunteered for overseas service

and they were in trenches in Ypres on the battlefield.

In 1914, the Battle of Ypres saw

the British and French clash with German troops

at this vital Allied stronghold.

In just one month,

the horrific trench warfare claimed almost 60,000 British troops

and a staggering 130,000 German soldiers.

Michael Costello, now a middle-aged officer,

took the band across the Channel to help British morale.

Michael Costello as bandmaster, going to France at 52,

it would have been partly because he held a senior position

within the unit,

so he might have felt obliged to lead his band there.

On active service, the band would partly have been a band

because even in the 14-18, units came out of the line

and went back to areas where they had entertainments,

football matches, and the band would probably play there.

In the infantry, the bandsman doubled up as a stretcher bearer.

So you were a bandsman but your military role was being a stretcher bearer.

Phil learnt Michael Costello survived the war

but he died six years later in 1923

and was given full military honours.

At this stage, he had no concrete proof

that Michael was indeed Olive Buck's grandfather.

You can spend a couple of days, maybe even a week,

going down the wrong path.

And only when you find a living relative

or somebody says, "Hang on a minute, my uncle, that wasn't his name.

"His father wasn't so-and-so," then you go oops, I've got the wrong ones.

AIRRAID SIRENS

Coming up, Phil's enquiries stir up dramatic wartime memories.

I heard the first bomb come down

and we all huddled under the stairs.

Heir hunters solve thousands of cases a year

and millions of pounds are paid out to rightful heirs

but not every case can be cracked.

The Treasury has a list of over 2,000 estates

which have baffled the heir hunters and remain unsolved.

Could you be the heir they've been searching for?

Are you in line for a windfall worth hundreds, thousands

or even millions of pounds?

Estates stay on the list for up to 30 years

and today, we're focusing on three names.

Are they relatives of yours?

James Charles Brown died in Rugby on New Year's Day in 2000 aged 86.

If heirs aren't found, his money will go to the government.

Did you know Julius Ajidahuan from Ilford in Essex?

He died in June 2009

and may have had African or Caribbean heritage.

So far, no-one's come forward to claim his estate.

Also on our list is Zillah Joan Forge,

who was from Lewes in East Sussex.

She died in the year 2000, aged 82.

All efforts to trace her relatives have drawn a blank.

If the names James Charles Brown,

Julius Ajidahuan or Zillah Forge mean anything to you

or someone you know,

you could have an unexpected windfall coming your way.

Sometimes it takes a hunch to piece together the ancestral jigsaw puzzle

of an heir hunt.

Olive Buck had died in Bath in 2007,

leaving no known relatives and an unclaimed estate.

The heir hunters at Celtic Research had found out

that Olive's mother's family were the Costellos.

But the line they'd found had family members popping up all over the place.

Starting off in Ireland, you then moved to Scotland

and some of his children were born in Scotland

and one or more were born in England.

Heir hunter Phil thought he knew the reason why.

He turned out to be a military person

and they don't normally change their occupation.

If Phil's hunch was right,

Olive's grandfather was a soldier called Michael Costello

and her Uncle Maurice was another soldier,

who'd had three children - Richard, Michael and Dorothy.

If they were alive, they'd all be heirs.

Michael Costello was my first port of call.

After proving the line, I needed to speak to a living relative

to see if my research was correct.

Michael Costello was shocked when he got a phone call in February 2010.

We lost contact prior to 1942.

To have her literally raised from the dead

in 2010, yes, it was obviously a surprise.

At last, Phil had found one of Olive's living relatives.

Now he could get the ball rolling, finding other heirs.

What Michael was able to do was confirm to me

that the research I'd already got together and already proved,

he then established that... he verified that information.

So the next step was to make contact with Michael's sister Dorothy.

I was very surprised when Phil got in touch about Olive

because as far as I was concerned she was completely in the past.

The dust had settled over events that had separated the two families,

who lived just a stone's throw apart.

Back in the 1940s,

Michael Costello would call at his cousin Olive's family home

every Sunday.

Of all the aunts and uncles, I lived the closest to Aunt May

and the distance between our respective houses

was about 300 yards.

To my knowledge, the last time I saw Olive

was in 1941.

The family separation took place against one of the darkest periods

in Bath's history.

On the nights of 25th and 26th April 1942,

German aircraft dropped hundreds of high explosive bombs on Bath.

It was in retaliation for the British bombing

of the medieval city of Lubeck.

Hitler and his generals allegedly picked British cities

with the greatest architectural treasures

from the Baedeker tourist guides, hence the name the Baedeker Raids.

It was not just Bath but places like Canterbury,

York, Norwich and so on.

The whole point of the raid

was that by destroying the historic buildings,

that would affect morale

but also to terrorise the people as well.

The bombs demolished ancient churches

and Georgian dwellings in the heart of the city.

Suburban areas also came under attack.

I can remember the Bath blitz quite clearly.

I heard the first bomb come down and my father was with me

and he moved quicker than me to get back home

and we all huddled under the stairs.

That was my brother, sister, my mother and father and myself.

We should have gone to an air-raid shelter

but luckily, we stayed under our stairs

and the air-raid shelter we should have gone to

had a direct hit and everybody was killed.

The people in this street would not have expected

to have been the centre of attention during a raid

because even if they'd been attacking Bath...

And, of course, they thought it was going to be Bristol and fire crews were on their way there

and then they had to turn back.

So when this happened, it was a complete surprise.

There was very little defence, anyway, to give them forewarning.

There were no barrage balloons or anti-aircraft guns

or anything of that sort.

So people were caught out

and that's how, I think, a lot of the fatalities occurred.

In total, a staggering 19,000 buildings in Bath were destroyed...

and 400 people were killed.

Dorothy and Michael's house was badly damaged but still standing.

It was pretty messy,

with fires going and buildings down

and even the church where I was christened,

St James' church in Bath, it was demolished.

But, no, it was chaotic.

Olive's family home on Victoria Road had been flattened.

I remember, after the blitz,

my father was very protective of us.

He did just go and check that my Aunt May was all right,

their family had survived,

because their house had more damage than ours.

In the days that followed,

the people of Bath tried to find safe shelter wherever they could,

terrified that the bombers would return.

There was a mass exodus out of the city,

many people finding refuge in the mines.

There are plenty of them around here on the outskirts of Bath.

And then, of course, in the villages and farms

in the countryside surrounding

and they played a very important part in putting people up.

In the mayhem, the Costellos had no idea

where their Aunt May, Uncle Wilfred and cousins Olive and Vera

disappeared to.

All the other relatives, we'd got in touch,

because Aunt May, to my knowledge, was the only one that was bombed out.

Where she lived, she may have lived outside of Bath for all I know.

That would have happened quite often,

that, you know, families got split up.

The siblings would never hear of their cousin again,

until 65 years later

when the heir hunters made contact about Olive's estate.

I haven't really thought about inheriting from Olive

because she's so remote.

I'm more interested in the history

than any financial gain.

Phil's research has revealed the wider Costello family tree

and has so far found 16 heirs to Olive's estate.

They will all share in her £15,000 inheritance.

He's pleased that his search has reconnected the heirs

to their wider family heritage.

When I find a family

and they've sort of gone their separate ways for generations,

it makes you feel good when they start realising

they haven't just got one cousin, they've got 20 cousins

and they can enjoy their time getting to know their cousins again.

In London, heir hunters Fraser and Fraser are being seriously tested

by the case of James Somers

but they're not giving up.

James died in Ashford in 2008 aged 68.

He was a big sports fan and a regular at his local pub.

He was a bit of a gent, actually, Jim, you know,

and you could go and have a couple of pints with Jim

and enjoy a quiet, decent conversation with him.

The team has little to go on

in the search for heirs to an estate estimated at £100,000.

The Irish one is definitely out.

But they have managed to find James' birth in 1940 in Kent

and they've come up with a possible maiden name for his mother.

Somers to Brothey, 1940.

Brothey is an unusual name

and so the team are researching every possible variation

to get a lead.

We're playing with variants of the spelling of Brothey

to see if we can try and find something that will connect.

Suddenly, the team find details for someone with the surname Somers

and a mother's maiden name similar to Brothey.

We've found what looks to be the birth of a brother of the deceased.

He's born in Bridge, which is the right area.

The maiden of the mother given is Brophey - B-R-O-P-HE-Y,

as opposed to what we've got at the moment,

which was B-R-O-TH-E-Y.

So we've got a T and a P, that's... pretty good.

At the moment, we're trying to marry him off and see if we can find him.

The team are hoping this could be James's brother,

born just five miles from James' birthplace in Kent

but is it just a series of coincidences?

The researchers urgently need to speak to either him

or a member of his family.

Right, what have we got?

-Who have you got a phone number for?

-The daughter.

The niece of the deceased.

Believing they have a number for the brother's daughter,

case manager David Milchard wastes no time in making the call.

Hello? I'm trying to trace a family by the name of Somers.

He's in Faversham. Do you have his address, at all?

OK.

The relative turns out not to be a niece but the brother's ex-wife.

All right. Do you recall their names at all?

Yeah.

Yeah?

While chatting through the family's names...

Seamus. They were twins as well, were they?

..David makes a sudden connection.

What about Seamus? Could that be James?

Bingo. It seems James was also known as Seamus,

the Irish version of the name.

They've identified the right family.

Let's get a tree. Can we draw a tree up over here?

It's a massive breakthrough.

What's happening?

Let's get it on a tree, then we can see where we're going.

What did she say, then?

She said they called him Seamus, which is James in Irish -

it's the same.

So that was right.

Then she told me about these other kids here.

From the conversation,

the team now knows that James' family originally hailed from Ireland.

They believe he had a twin sister and six other siblings.

-So he's got loads of brothers and sisters?

-Yeah.

Why haven't we been finding them?

But some were born in Ireland.

All attention is now directed on finding James' brothers and sisters.

If they're still alive, they'll be heirs.

We've got the ball rolling now. We're off and away.

The team quickly finds a phone number for one of the brothers.

He's their first possible heir to James Somers' estate.

Hello, Mr Somers? Hello, there. Sorry to trouble you.

My name's David Milchard of Fraser and Fraser in London.

We're trying to trace a family by the name of Somers

in connection with an estate we're dealing with.

Can I just ask you, was your father's name Frank?

When did he die?

In 2009. All right.

Did your father leave a will at all?

Right. And who are the executors?

You're one... You're the only one, are you?

Now David's learnt that James' father died a year after he did.

As the father is direct next of kin,

James Somers' estate would have gone to his father Frank,

as he was alive when James died.

Frank, however, did leave a will,

so this means that James' money will go to beneficiaries

named in Frank's will.

We're positive now we've got the right family.

We've spoken to Richard Somers, who is a brother of the deceased

and therefore all the others are siblings of the deceased.

It's a huge result.

The siblings have agreed to meet with a company representative.

And David calls Bob Smith off his task of finding certificates

in Tunbridge Wells

for a more important job.

Hello, Bob. How are you going?

I've got an address for you and an appointment between 12 and one o'clock in Herne Bay.

-How long will it take you to get to Herne Bay?

-Herne Bay...

-an hour, hour and a half.

-OK, then.

-OK, all right, cheers, Dave. Bye.

Bob now knows everything rests on his meeting with the heirs in Herne Bay.

The father made a will,

so what we need to do is go and see the executor of his will,

which happens to be his son, the brother of our deceased,

and ask him to sign our contract.

With Bob on his way to see the family,

partner Neil Fraser is worried that any inheritance from the estate

now depends on what James' father requested in his will.

If in his will he leaves it all to the cats' home,

then it's the cats' home that will be getting the money

and not the family.

So we have to be pretty careful on that.

We'll see when they get back to us.

An hour later, Bob Smith has arrived to meet James Somers' heirs,

Kathleen and Richard, who are representing their other siblings.

But before Bob can discuss arrangements,

he has the delicate task of breaking the news

that their brother passed away two years ago.

It's a difficult but sometimes necessary part

of an heir hunter's job.

Now, Bob needs to explain to the family

they're entitled to their brother's unclaimed estate.

Yeah, if you didn't know about it

and no-one comes forward to make a claim,

-then the money does go to the government.

-Right.

Nice to meet you.

Bob leaves the agreement with them

and over the coming days and weeks,

they'll be able to discuss the situation

and decide whether or not to appoint the heir hunters.

James' sister Kathleen reflects on the news

that the brother she lost contact with 13 years ago has died.

It was a shock, yes.

Never expected it. We were always going to go and...

But my son went round that way

and he said it didn't look as though the house had been lived in

for some time.

Like so many people at different times do drift apart.

I don't know why. I haven't got a clue.

She's able to recall fond memories of her much younger sibling.

He was extremely clever, very talented in every way.

Indeed he was.

Remember now, I was 12 years older than him

and he'd always explain it to you

because he knew how to explain things.

I would like to go and see his grave and say a little prayer for him.

Back on the road, Bob Smith has now updated the office.

He's respectful of the family's need to consider their options.

From our point of view, I'm quite hopeful that they will want to use

the services of Fraser and Fraser.

It's really a decision for them.

I think at the moment they're all a bit up in the air.

Often in near-kin cases, close relatives will pursue their own claim with the Treasury

and it's three long months before the company hears back

from James' heirs.

Today, Neil's received the news they've been hoping for.

So it's been a long wait for myself and David.

Really, we've had our fingers crossed

that the contracts were going to come in.

I've just heard that all our waiting's paid off.

The two contracts have now come in,

so we represent the two executors of the father's will.

He is the only beneficiary

and thankfully, we're going to get paid for our work.

If you would like advice

about building your family tree or making a will,

go to bbc.co.uk

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