Milner/Sedgbeer Heir Hunters

In Yorkshire, the heir hunters are searching for the beneficiaries

to an unclaimed estate worth an estimated £200,000.

They're looking for long-lost relatives

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

Could they be knocking on your door?

On today's programme,

the battle's on, as the heir hunters

come up against a rival on the road...

They're climbing all over this case while I'm at the house.

..and the death of an elderly Devon woman

leaves her descendants speechless.

I never thought for one second Ruth had any money.

When Saul contacted me I said, "There's a mistake here".

Plus, how you may be entitled to inherit

some of the unclaimed estates held by the Treasury.

Could thousands of pounds be heading your way?

Every year in the UK, an estimated 300,000 people

die without leaving a will.

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

will go to the Government.

Last year, they made £12 million from unclaimed estates.

That's where the heir hunters come in.

They make it their business to track down missing relatives,

and help them claim their rightful inheritance.

One of the great parts of this job

is not only bringing good news to people about inheritances

that they're entitled to, but also reuniting families.

It's seven in the morning

at the offices of heir hunters Fraser & Fraser,

and boss Neil Fraser has been scanning the Treasury's weekly list of unclaimed estates.

His instincts are telling him one of the cases could be worth a lot of money.

We're going to look at the estate of Ian Thomas Walter Milner.

He's from Derby, dies in 2009,

and it looks as though he owns a property.

So, value-wise, we're talking maybe £150,000, £200,000.

The fact the deceased has two middle names should help their search,

so it makes the case even more appealing to Neil.

There are going to be several Ian Milners.

There are possibly going to be two or three Ian Thomas Milners.

I expect we'll only find one Ian Thomas Walter Milner.

Ian Milner died aged 60 on 9th November 2009 in Derby.

He never married, and lived for most of his life

in this semi-detached house in Mickleover,

a small town of 17,000 people, which although now a suburb of Derby,

is often referred to as "the village" by locals.

For the last 20 years of his life,

Ian worked as a cleaner in his local supermarket.

Martin Reeve was his boss there,

and the two struck up a close friendship.

From the very onset, we got on.

Ian was a really nice guy.

He always spoke...well every morning.

He always had a smile and a few words to say.

Ian was a very hard-working guy. You could always rely on him, as well.

The two men shared a love of dogs.

Ian was very passionate about his pet - Sheba, a dog.

I know he spent pretty much every hour with Sheba.

He didn't seem to have family or friends, really, around him,

in the local area that looked out for him,

so I felt some compassion towards him,

to try and help him the best I could.

In the office, the search for any beneficiaries to Ian's estate begins.

Good morning. I apologise for troubling you so early in the morning.

I'm making enquiries about a neighbour of yours who lived at number 59.

Case manager Dave Slee has got hold of a number for Ian's neighbour in Mickleover.

We think he was from Shardlow area. So you knew the mother?

Phone calls like these can give the heir hunters

the head start they need with a case, and put them ahead of the competition

at this crucial early stage.

Did Ian have any brothers or sisters, as far as you're aware?

He was an only child, was he? Take care now. Bye-bye.

The neighbour has given Dave the basic information he needs

to start building up Ian's family tree.

It seems he was the only child of Benjamin Milner and Mary Halford.

I'm fairly confident, as one can ever be,

that there's no near kin,

so the deceased had no brothers and sisters.

This is key information for the heir hunters,

as it means they won't waste time looking for siblings,

and instead start on the search for cousins. But Dave's a bit wary.

The risk is taking a neighbour's information

that the deceased was an only child as gospel.

But Dave's an experienced heir hunter, and he's willing to take a chance,

so the team start their search for Ian's cousins.

It looks like his father, Benjamin Milner, was part of a large family,

so it's likely there will be heirs on that side.

But at the moment, Dave can't even find Benjamin Milner

on the 1911 census.

Are you doing a year each side, Amy?

The family we have identified would mean that the deceased

had a number of paternal aunts and uncles.

If they're wrong, then we could spend ages researching the wrong family.

Meanwhile, researcher Dominic

has started looking into Ian's mother's family.

Born Mary Halford, she appears on the 1911 census,

along with her father, Thomas Halford, and her mother, Alice,

but there's no sign of any other children from that marriage.

It looks like, on the maternal side, there isn't going to be any heirs, but we don't know that for sure.

If Ian's mother was an only child,

there's no chance that he will have any cousins

on her side of the family who would be entitled to inherit.

That means that the team could be relying on the paternal side

to provide them with legitimate heirs.

Luckily, Simon's making good progress with the Milner family tree.

On the '11 census there were six siblings,

and there's another one born after '11,

so we've got quite a few,

so hopefully somewhere, amongst all those,

there will be some cousins of the deceased.

Ian's father, Benjamin, was one of seven children

born to Charles Milner and Eliza Massay.

The children were all born in and around Burton-on-Trent,

so Simon is looking for marriage records in the same area.

I've got a marriage of an Alice C Milner in Stoke-on-Trent,

which is not quite the right area,

but it's nearer than any of the others.

Dominic has been waiting

to tie up the maternal side of this investigation,

and now he's got the means to do it.

That's Thomas's death. That's Alice's death.

Simon's given him Ian's maternal grandparents' death certificate.

The informant on Thomas Halford's death was his widow, Alice.

When Alice died six years later,

the informant on her death was her daughter, Mary, Ian's mother.

Dominic thought these certificates might show that Mary had a brother

or sister who hadn't shown up on the census.

This could have led to nieces and nephews

who'd have been entitled to a share of Ian's estate.

But it wasn't to be,

and the maternal side of this investigation

is now officially closed.

But as one door closes, another opens.

While looking through probate records,

Dominic has come across a copy of Ian's mother Mary's will.

It shows she left an estate worth £125,000, in 1994.

That would indicate to me

she probably owned the property when she died.

You would hope that when we get that probate record back,

it would show the deceased, Ian Milner,

was the one who received all that money,

and it might indicate there is some value to this case,

so it is worth us throwing everything at it.

If the house was worth £125,000 in 1994,

the housing boom means it's almost certainly worth

the £200,000 Neil originally estimated.

That's great news for the team.

Heir hunters work on commission,

taking a percentage of the amount claimed by each heir.

So now they know it's a high-value case,

they can afford to up the manpower on this job and really go after it.

Veteran case manager David Milchard, AKA "Grimble", joins the team.

We've got nobody on the mother's side,

but it looks like there's quite a large family on the father's side.

Might just whittle down a bit.

The team have discovered that

out of Ian's six aunts and uncles on his father's side,

at least three of them died without children,

so they are now focusing on Ian's aunt Ada, in Bradford.

Unfortunately, she married Johnson and there are lots of Johnsons,

so we're having a little trouble doing anything with Jack and Harry Johnson at the moment.

They're all potentially cousins of the deceased.

What Simon has managed to establish is that Ada and Walter Johnson

had five children - Marjorie, Charles, Annie, Jack and Harry.

But when it comes to finding their children,

it's like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Harry Johnson, who is the child of Ada,

we've got eight marriages for Harry in Bradford, when he'd be in his 20s and early 30s,

so we have no way of knowing which is the right one without getting it.

At times like this, the only thing to do is call in the cavalry.

My thinking is getting Dave Mansell over to Bradford.

Dave Mansell is one of the company's senior researchers on the road.

He's part of a crack team of heir hunters based all over the country.

Their job is to follow up any lead...

..be the first at the heir's door,

and make sure they are the company they decide to sign up with.

Right now, Dave needs to get over to Bradford Register Office,

and chase down the vital certificates

that will prove they're on the right track.

There's an Ada Frances Milner,

to that Walter Johnson.

Now, I'm getting a lead on the Jack stem.

Yeah?

I might hopefully have a current address,

so we shouldn't be too far off on that.

The heir hunters desperately need a breakthrough.

This is a high-value case, and rival firms will be hard on their heels.

But Simon is still struggling to find that elusive first heir.

We did have three marriages.

We think we've got rid of two, which left just that one.

-She's not on the phone?

-No, no phone number found.

I know, it's shocking, isn't it(?)

Coming up, every heir hunter's nightmare.

I've just been talking to somebody else about that.

-Have you got someone with you?

-Yes.

-OK, sorry to bother you.

A rival from another company catches up with Dave

at the worst possible moment.

-Is that someone else, like yourself?

-Yes.

Heir-hunting is all about making sure the right people get the money

that's due to them.

But it can also bring families back together,

as in the case of Ruth Sedgbeer,

whose £25,000 estate

appeared on the Treasury's list in November 2009.

The case was picked up by Saul Marks

of heir-hunting company Celtic Research.

The deceased in this case was Ruth Sedgbeer, who died aged 80.

She was born in 1929, in North Devon.

Ruth Sedgbeer was a true Devon maid.

She was born and lived her whole life in Rustic Cottage,

in the tiny hamlet of Gunn.

For her, an excursion to South Molton,

which is about seven miles away,

was quite a journey,

which she undertook only because of her cats,

usually to take them to the vet.

As well as her cats,

Ruth's other great love was her local church, in Gunn,

where she was a loyal member of the congregation.

She would never come to church without wearing a hat.

On ordinary Sundays, she would wear a bright-red beret,

but on festive occasions,

she always sported a straw boater with a bright green ribbon around it.

Ruth looked after the church for the whole of her life.

If she found a leak in the roof, I would know about it very quickly,

and Ruth would always say, "And what are you going to do about it?"

She was a determined lady, very independent-minded.

When she was 20, Ruth went to work for a local family,

where she was employed as a mother's help for over 50 years.

My mother simply couldn't imagine life without Ruth.

She was incredibly important in our family.

She was part and parcel of everything

that happened in family life.

She made no bones about the fact that she didn't like children when we were small.

We kind of went in the same category as peas and chocolate,

which were her other two dislikes.

I remember this, as a child.

Just about tolerable, but basically to be avoided.

But in her way, I think she was very fond of all of us as a family.

Ruth lived with and cared for her elderly parents until they died.

She never married.

When you consider the time she was born, 1929,

a lost generation of young men after the First World War.

Many women from that era didn't marry

because there was actually a shortage of men.

She was a shy person,

who didn't relate to other people particularly well.

She much preferred animals, loved them dearly.

And I think she was very happy looking after her parents,

and leading that sort of quiet life.

When Saul first started work on the Sedgbeer case in 2009,

his first task was to check the online records

of births, marriages and deaths,

which told him that Ruth's parents' names

were Reginald Sedgbeer and Agnes Johnson.

Presuming this to be correct,

we were able to look up other Sedgbeer-Johnson births,

to see if there were any siblings, and there weren't.

So I looked for the marriage of her parents,

and there was no Sedgbeer-Johnson marriage, either.

An amateur genealogist might have been stumped by this apparent dead end,

but Saul was able to call on his years of heir-hunting experience,

which helped him make his next move.

I had a feeling that Johnson and Johnston are very similar names,

and it could always be that the two names

had simply been mis-transcribed.

One was right, and one was wrong.

Sure enough, Saul found there were two records

of two Johnston-Sedgbeer marriages in the area,

and five Johnston-Sedgbeer births.

It can be very satisfying to solve a little riddle like that,

where perhaps things aren't as they seem.

You need a certain amount of lateral thinking,

so, yes, once we can open a case up like that, we can get on with it.

Like Smith and Jones, Johnston is a very common name,

which makes it very hard to research,

but a quick check revealed that Saul's luck was in.

Johnstone is a very Scottish name,

and this family were entirely from Devon,

and there aren't that many Scots in Devon,

so what we were able to do was establish

this was in fact the only Johnstone family in this area.

Saul immediately started calling

all the Devon-based Johnstones that he could find.

All the people I spoke to in this family were incredibly helpful.

They were willing to lend their time and their memories

to compiling this fantastic tree.

I quickly discovered that the deceased mother, Agnes Johnstone,

was the youngest of 13 children, so it was an enormous family.

Ruth's grandparents were James Johnstone and Sarah Thomason,

who met and married in 1881, in Betws Garmon near Mount Snowdon, in North Wales.

James's family were Scottish shepherds

who had moved down there for work,

while Sarah was the daughter of a foreman in the local slate quarries.

James was always chasing work as a shepherd,

and shortly after marrying Sarah, the couple moved back to Dumfries in Scotland.

But then came a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity

to take part in one of the great agricultural experiments of the Victorian age.

In 1818, wealthy Midlands industrialist John Knight

and his son Frederick bought the Royal forest of Exmoor,

with the radical idea of turning it into a thriving agricultural business.

The Royal forests had been remote moorland described as

a filthy, barren ground for hundreds, if not thousands of years.

We were looking at a time of agricultural improvement,

where the technology to improve the land was there.

We had lots of people living in cities that hadn't previously,

because of the Industrial Revolution, and suddenly areas of England

that were unfarmed and were seen as waste became the focus of attention.

You could look at them and say, "If we could reclaim these, we could get food from them."

John Knight literally saw Exmoor as covered in, sort of, seas of waving corn.

That's what his ambition was.

Livestock also played an important part in the Knights' vision.

They decided to import

herds of hardy Scottish black-faced sheep, which could withstand the harsh conditions.

And this is where Ruth's grandfather James Maxwell Johnstone came in.

They also brought down not just the sheep

but the shepherds with them, and of course these shepherds

knew how to shepherd in mountain areas and in the West Country,

and in this part of the West Country,

there wasn't that sort of local knowledge

of how to keep sheep and livestock going through the harsh winters.

Ruth's grandparents couldn't refuse this offer of guaranteed work,

so they joined a remarkable migration of Scottish shepherds and their sheep to the South.

Many made this epic 600-mile journey from the Scottish Lowlands to Devon on foot,

herding their sheep ahead of them.

Others loaded their animals onto boats and even trains,

and they were then driven the last 30 miles or so up onto Exmoor.

It's not known how James and Sarah made their way south,

but they did travel with three young children,

and when they eventually arrived, they moved to the remote Hoar Oak Cottage.

They lived there for the next 17 years,

and went on to have ten more children.

Ruth's mother, Agnes, was the youngest,

and shortly after she was born in 1904,

James died,

leaving Sarah to bring up

all 13 children on her own.

It was an unbelievably hard life for these Scottish families,

but the scale and ambition of the Knights' vision was breathtaking.

The area that the Knights had was about 10,000 acres.

Within that, there were no roads, there were no villages, there was nothing.

And by the time the Knights had finished,

they'd built about 16 farms, a village, a church, a school,

and, in effect, what they'd done was created the largest parish in England.

But sadly, the Knights' dream of turning Exmoor into viable farmland was doomed to fail.

They simply ran out of money.

Not even the greatest Victorian ingenuity could contend with

the wet climate and acidic, water-logged soil.

But whilst nature won the battle, man and sheep definitely left their mark.

They have completely changed the face of the landscape.

So when you look at that, in terms of the judgment about whether the Knights were successful or not,

you could say their legacy is in these farms and in changing the face of Exmoor for ever.

Coming up, Saul comes across a woman who holds the key

to tracing Ruth Sedgbeer's heirs.

She really was an heir hunter's dream.

Heir hunters solve thousands of cases a year,

ensuring that 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

that have baffled the heir hunters and remain unclaimed.

These estates stay on the list for up to 30 years,

and each one could be worth anything from £5,000 to many millions.

Today, we're focusing on three names from the list.

Are they relatives of yours?

Could you be in line for an unexpected windfall?

Maria Carmen Navarro died in Hove, East Sussex,

on 23rd December 2007.

Navarro is a Spanish and Italian surname, meaning "Basque speaker",

and could her death so close to Christmas jog any memories?

So far, no-one has come forward to claim her estate.

Edith Stallion died aged 87 on 16th May 1997

in Mile End, London.

If no heirs of hers are found, her money will go to the Government.

Bryan Arthur Daniel Tebbut

died on 5th January 2003 in Haywards Heath, West Sussex.

He was born on 10th July 1929,

the year of the infamous Wall Street Crash that led to the Great Depression.

His estate is also unclaimed.

If the names Maria Navarro, Edith Stallion

or Bryan Tebbut mean anything to you, or someone you know,

you could have a potential fortune coming your way.

At Celtic Research's Liverpool office, heir hunter Saul Marks

was still working the case of Ruth Sedgbeer,

the Devon maid who died aged 80 in the tiny hamlet of Gunn,

where she'd lived her entire life.

I remember talking to her, on one of the last times I visited her in the cottage,

and remarking with her how 80 years ago she'd been born

just upstairs, and here she was,

sitting just downstairs.

Ruth's funeral was an important occasion for the whole village.

All her friends and acquaintances

and people perhaps that she didn't realise were friends, were here,

and we all remembered her with great affection,

and thought to ourselves that we're not likely

to have another character like Ruth

in our midst again.

She was a one-off.

Ruth had left behind a £25,000 estate

but, as yet, there was no-one to inherit it.

Saul had discovered that Ruth's mother, Agnes,

was one of 13 children of Exmoor sheep farmers

James and Sarah Johnstone.

Although Johnstone is a common name,

it turned out there was only one Johnstone family in North Devon.

I was able to actually track down heirs in almost every branch of the family,

with each person giving me numbers for someone else in another branch.

So it was really a snowball effect.

Eventually, Saul's research led him to his first heir -

Ruth's second cousin, Bette Baldwin,

a great granddaughter of James and Sarah Johnstone,

and also a keen amateur genealogist.

She really was an heir hunter's dream.

This lady had done a great deal of research into the family history.

She had a lot of documents and a lot of knowledge,

and she had done a lot of work on the social history of the family,

as opposed to just the bare bones of the names and dates.

She had done a lot about the history of how her family were Scots

and came to live in Devon.

Because I had been doing the research on the Johnstone family,

from whom Ruth and I are both descended,

and the link to the 13 children

and the sheep-raising on Exmoor,

I was able to give him quite a lot of that information.

Hearing about Ruth's death was a shock to Bette.

Thanks to her research into her family history,

she'd been down to visit her cousin a few times,

and she vividly remembered the first time they met.

I knocked on the door, wondering what was going to happen,

and actually felt a real "zush" of excitement, because I thought,

"Whose face am I going to see when she walks round this door?"

And there she was, and in fact it was like looking at my mother

just before the end of her days.

Sort of a very sweet, white-haired lady in a pretty cotton dress.

Through Ruth, Bette heard more about her great-grandparents,

James and Sarah Johnstone, and their life in a remote cottage on Exmoor...

..a subject that had fascinated her from an early age.

One of the stories that my mother always told

was about Granny Johnstone,

and that she had been born in a cottage

overlooking Mount Snowdon,

and then she lived in a cottage on the moor and had 13 children.

That was the bit of oral history which I'd heard from a tiny girl

and that captured me, then.

Bette was amazed to hear she was going to receive

a share of Ruth's £25,000 estate.

I never thought for one second Ruth had any money,

and in fact when Saul contacted me, I said,

"There's a mistake here.

"She lived a very simple life, she had no money."

But apparently there was.

In the end, Saul found 39 heirs to Ruth's estate.

From one elderly lady, who lived alone in a cottage in Devon,

her estate will be shared out among so many cousins,

both on her maternal and paternal sides, so a lot of people will benefit from this.

One of the these beneficiaries was John Bowden,

Ruth's second cousin

and a great-grandson of James and Sarah Johnstone.

His son Will had grown up in the area,

and knew all about his family's link with Hoar Oak Cottage.

We've used it as a base, really, and walked to it or past it,

or made a point of passing by, just because we've got a family interest in it.

Will was delighted when he heard from Saul

that he had a long-lost cousin, Bette, who shared his interest in the Johnstone family.

Bette and her husband Jim came down and we all had lunch together

at Mum and Dad's, and we started looking through old photographs and comparing family history.

It was lovely to be able to put two cousins back in touch

who had never really known of each other's existence.

It's lovely to bring warmth as well as money.

The money component of it is far and away outweighed by the fact that I met up with Will.

Since they met, Will and Bette have discussed their shared dream

of preserving the now dilapidated Hoar Oak Cottage.

Realising that we've both got this interest,

we decided if we combined our energies, we'd have a far better chance of achieving it.

Today, they're making the eight-mile journey across rugged Exmoor

to see where their great-great-grandparents lived,

and get a sense of what life here was like over 100 years ago.

Will's a trained conservation architect,

and his vision is to restore Hoar Oak into a camping barn

or an outdoor classroom, where people can come to learn about and experience

the nature and history of this unique landscape.

When you're there, all you hear is sheep baa-ing,

birds singing,

the wind blowing, and the water trickling by in the stream,

and that sense of quiet and solitude,

and you see no other buildings.

What do you think Ruth would have made of all of this,

us coming out here and trying to knock the old place back into shape?

I think she would have been really pleased that you and I had met up as a consequence of all this.

I think she'd have been really pleased.

But I think, like a lot of that generation,

-they've been a bit baffled that we were interested in resurrecting the cottage.

-Yeah.

The life of the Johnstone family on Exmoor has now all but disappeared.

Thanks to Ruth's legacy, two of her descendants have joined forces

to make sure their memory will never be forgotten.

Heir hunters Fraser & Fraser have been investigating the case

of Ian Milner, who died aged 60 in Mickleover, Derby.

A quiet man, Ian was well thought of by his colleagues at the local supermarket, where he worked.

I'm very pleased that I met Ian, worked with him,

we got on very well, and it was a privilege to know Ian.

Ian had quite a tough life.

His father was a coal merchant, and so Ian, one of his first jobs in life,

was to deliver coal, which is not the easiest job in the world.

I think he paid for that in his health later on in life.

The heir hunters have discovered that Ian inherited his semi-detached house from his mother,

and as a result, his estate is worth an estimated £200,000.

Although there's been no sign of any competition so far,

a high-value case like this is bound to attract the attention of rival heir-hunting firms.

The company have decided to send two senior researchers, Dave Mansell and Bob Barrett,

up to Yorkshire to try and stay ahead of the competition.

-No phone?

-No, none of them got phones, this is the problem.

If they had phones I could've phoned them.

Leave it with me, blue eyes.

I wish you luck! All right, then. OK. Bye.

Whenever possible, the office like to call ahead,

so the heirs know to expect a visit, but this is a race against time,

so they have no choice but to turn up unannounced.

But after a couple of attempts, Dave's not having much success.

He's been through several addresses on his list, and still no joy.

And Bob's not having much luck in Stoke, either.

Problem Bob's got at the moment is he's in a traffic jam.

He's a bit worried whether he'll be able to get round to see everybody.

He's got potentially six calls to make.

Back in Bradford, Dave's down to his last address.

If this next heir isn't at home, then the whole day will have been wasted.

I'm off to the last-chance saloon now,

to see if Jacqueline Johnstone that was is at home.

And perhaps we'll have a bit more luck and find somebody

who is an heir actually at home, so we can talk to them about the family.

The team's research counts for nothing

until Dave can meet an heir and get an agreement signed.

Were you originally a Johnstone? Is your dad Jack Johnstone?

Your mother Mary Elkington?

At last, after an hour of doorstepping,

Dave has finally met an heir.

Jacqueline is the daughter of Jack and Mary Johnstone

and a cousin of Ian Milner.

Once inside, Dave talks Jacqueline through the process

and manages to get some more information about her family that will help complete his research.

Do you have some siblings, brothers and sisters?

Yes, two brothers, two sisters.

It's all going like clockwork,

until suddenly they're interrupted by a knock at the door.

Yes, I'm just talking to somebody else about it. Yes. It's all right.

-I'll come back in a minute.

-It may be a while.

From triumph to potential disaster.

Another heir-hunting company has turned up on the doorstep,

hoping to speak to Jacqueline.

-Is that someone else like yourself?

-Yes.

This is not the first time that Dave's almost come face to face

with a rival heir hunter.

But now he needs to move quickly.

-Do you want me to get him on the phone?

-Yeah.

Jacqueline calls her brother, Steven, who lives nearby.

-Are you wanting me to tell Steven anything now?

-Shall I have a quick word with him?

Would you just have a quick word with this gentleman that's here, please, Steven? Hang on a minute.

If rival heir hunters are already in the area, then it's vital

that Dave sees as many heirs as he can in person, as soon as possible.

Right, when I've finished with Jacqueline I'll come across and see you.

Thank you, bye-bye.

Dave prepares an agreement that he can leave with Jacqueline.

Shall I come with you to Steven's? Cos I don't know, you know, all this,

so if he wants... And then you do Steven's as well,

-and then if he agrees to go with you, and then we can both sign.

-Why not?

Luckily, Steven lives just around the corner,

so they should be with him in a few minutes.

-Where's your car?

-I'm facing down here.

-Down here.

With the competition breathing down Dave's neck, every second counts.

Hello, it's Dave Mansell. Can I speaking to Grimble as a matter of urgency, please.

David's on the phone, so Neil takes the call.

They're climbing all over this case, while I'm at the house.

They've been in contact with one of the heirs this morning,

and with this heir that I'm seeing now, on her mobile phone this morning.

It's a tricky situation, but at this point there's nothing the office can do about it.

Neil relays the bad news to David.

-What's he got?

-Erm, competition.

Meanwhile Dave and Jacqueline have made it round to Steven's house.

I think you're expecting me, are you?

Hello, I'm David, David Mansell from Fraser & Fraser. Hello, Steven, nice to see you.

Come on in, sis.

Dave needs to pull out all the stops and give his best sales pitch,

to convince these two that they are the company to go with.

...Which means you can cancel this contract seven days from midnight tonight,

without any obligation. That's your cooling-off period.

They're both impressed with what they hear, and decide to sign up there and then.

-Lovely. Thanks, David.

-Nice to have met you. Been a pleasure.

-And you, Jacqueline. Thanks for bringing us up here.

-It's a surprise, in't it?

It's a surprise, yeah.

Because we've never had any touch, any contact with the Milners,

so we were totally unaware of anything of this nature at all,

and how big the family was, actually.

For Dave Mansell, it's been a great result.

We started off very early this morning,

it's 20 past five in the afternoon now,

but at least we've got signatures on paper,

and it's nice people to see, when we eventually found somebody to talk to.

So, yeah, it's been worth it, it's been a good day.

So we'll head back now.

A good day indeed. It's less than 12 hours since Ian Milner's name

first appeared on the Treasury's list, and the company have signed up two heirs.

But Dave knows the work has just begun.

There are many more heirs to contact on this case.

A few days later, and there's some unexpected and unwelcome news.

Steven and Jacqueline have been contacted by another heir-hunting firm,

who've undercut their rate of commission.

It's a blow for Neil and the whole team.

It looks as though those beneficiaries are going to go with one of the other firms.

It's a shame, it's a real shame.

How hard all the staff worked to get on to that, but it's how it happens.

Some days you win, some days you lose.

This particular stem we've lost on.

But it's not all bad news.

In the end, there are 29 heirs in total on the Milner case,

and the company managed to sign up 20 of them.

One of these heirs was Carole Bamford,

the granddaughter of Ian's Aunt Alice.

Carole is Ian's first cousin once removed,

and will inherit a share of his £200,000 estate.

But Carole had no idea that her cousin even existed.

I was quite surprised to find out about Ian.

Actually, I was shocked more than anything.

My brothers were as well, not just myself. And my husband.

Cos we didn't think there was anybody left called Milner.

Although she can't remember her grandmother, Alice,

her death had a profound effect on Carole's family.

When Alice died, my grandad, who was blind, who was her husband,

he couldn't cope, so they had to put my mum and her two brothers

into a home in Birmingham, which was Father Hudson's Homes, and that's where they grew up.

Carole's got three daughters of her own and grandchildren,

so she knows exactly how she's going to spend her inheritance.

I will give those, I think, a nice holiday.

I think everybody says they'll have a good holiday, won't they?

so I'd like a holiday that I won't forget.

But that's not quite enough for Carole.

She's determined to honour Ian's memory, so a few weeks after being contacted by the heir hunters,

she's come to pay her respects.

I've come to the crematorium, now, where Ian was cremated and his ashes are,

so I'm just going to say a prayer or something for Ian

and tell him, you know, we're sorry we weren't there to comfort him.

Hoping to find out more about the cousin she never met,

she's also contacted Ian's old boss, Martin Reeve.

-Hello, Martin. My name's Carole.

-Hi.

She's able to build up a picture of Ian, the kind of man he was,

and the things he enjoyed.

He sounds a bit like my family. The things what people have told me, what he's done.

He liked a drink, just like us.

I like being on my own, whereas Ian liked to be on his own.

So I think, really, we've got something in common, and that's...

That's even better.

But, same as I say, there's a lot more I want to know about him,

and the book's not closed yet.

If you would like advice about building your family tree or making a will, go to -

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