Boyne/Pridmore Heir Hunters

Today, the heir hunters are dealing with an estate

which could be worth an estimated £120,000.

I've just made a house enquiry where the deceased lived.

Somewhere out there are some long-lost relatives who have no idea

they're in line for a windfall.

Could the heir hunters be knocking at your door?

On today's show,

a seasoned heir hunter is amazed by one man's thrifty lifestyle.

Our deceased must be the most frugal man I've ever heard of, really.

And one woman's story reveals the dangers of our industrial past.

Miners had many enemies underground -

gas, water,

roof cave-ins.

And so they did fear for their lives.

Plus, how you may be entitled to inherit an unclaimed estate

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 left behind goes to the government.

Last year, they kept £14 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 to claim their just inheritance.

I stop the government from getting money that doesn't belong to them

and I give it to the people whom it belongs to.

It's 7am at heir-hunting company Fraser & Fraser

and they're already hard at work.

Case manager Tony Pledger is looking into the case of Ronald Boyne.

It was referred to them a few days ago from a solicitor.

We've been looking at this case for a bit, um,

and it's now been advertised by the Treasury.

Um, but, as I say, we've already done a lot of research on it.

Tony's had a head start on the case,

but he's yet to sign up all the heirs.

Now it's been advertised on the Treasury's weekly list of people

who've died without a will, over 30 rival firms could beat him to it.

Ronald Boyne was 84 when he died on 20 December, 2010,

without leaving a will.

The only initial information we had

was that obtained from the death certificate,

which showed he was born in 1927 in Birmingham.

Of course, he died in Birmingham

and so obviously he was a local chap.

We were able to find his marriage in Birmingham to somebody called

Audrey Kay, and we were unable to trace children from that.

We then we found her death,

so we're pretty sure he's died a widower without any issue.

As Ronald and his wife did not have children,

the team now need to extend their research to his wider family.

The heir hunters earn their fee by taking a percentage

of the estate's final value.

As it isn't published on the Treasury's list,

the best way to get an idea of what it's worth

is to check out the deceased's property.

Senior on-the-road investigator Paul Matthews is hoping to speak to Ronald's neighbours.

We're pretty sure he owned the property

and, if that's the case, it would be nice for Paul to see the property,

make an assessment for it and, hopefully, we can form

some reasonable idea as to the potential value of the estate.

Most of the research on cases is done by the office team,

but front-line investigators like Paul

are the eyes and ears on the ground,

feeding back vital information.

We're now going to make an enquiry at the home address,

because at this point in time,

we still don't know the value of the estate.

We'll try to make some enquiries to try to put a value on it.

Paul has arrived in Birmingham and found Ronald's house.

He's hoping to speak to some of his neighbours.

No replies, I'm afraid.

HE KNOCKS AT DOOR

DOORBELL RINGS

Finally, Paul has some luck.

-Hello.

-Morning, sorry to bother you. I'm not selling anything.

Bill, Ronald's work colleague, and his wife Val,

were the only people in the street Ronald and his wife ever spoke to.

They never bothered with anybody in the avenue.

They literally kept themselves to themselves.

Val looked after Ronald in his home opposite

for nearly 14 years

after his wife died and illness left him with limited sight.

She remembers taking him to his building society

to sort out his finances.

We'd seen the man and he said... What he says to Ron, he says,

"I have never had a person with so many ISAs

"as yourself."

-So, he had a lot of money. Why didn't he spend it on himself?

-Yeah.

No. He wouldn't. No, no.

How much cash had he got, then?

Oh...

I couldn't tell you that.

It's... I mean, he's definitely got a bond of £36,000.

-Was it his own house?

-Oh, yeah, yeah.

It's his own house, all paid, everything.

What do these properties fetch down here?

If I say as a "for instance", just down here, that's up for 120.

It's great news for Ronald's potential heirs,

if they can find them.

Not only did he own a property,

but he had substantial savings and spent very little money on himself.

I must be honest and truthful with you. He was very tight.

Very tight, very careful.

He used to have a money bag and say you gave him some change...

Say you'd gone shopping for him and it was £9.99,

that meant he got a penny.

He used to have a bag, which he put pennies in.

So if it was £11.99,

he would give me a bag which had a pound of pennies in.

But he'd take one out because it was only 99p.

It's like an obsession. Save it, not spend it,

-but, at the end of the day, when Mr Grim Reaper comes along...

-Yeah.

Thank you very much for your help.

At least we know a little bit about your man. So, yeah...

COUPLE: It's a shame, really.

Because... Have many of the neighbours said anything?

-There's nobody in.

-Oh, right.

-OK. OK. Thank you very much for your time and your help.

-Thank you.

Thank you very much.

-All the very best.

-Bye. Bye-bye.

-Bye.

Well, that's probably the, er...

Something completely different.

I've been doing this for ten years now

and I think...

our deceased must be the most frugal man that I've ever heard of, really.

He just wouldn't spend his money.

His eating habits - always ate on the cheap -

and he wouldn't spend his money, but he loved investing.

But, you can't take it with you.

Paul reports back to the office team.

Hi, Fran. I've just made a house enquiry where the deceased lived,

which was interesting.

-OK.

-'For our purposes,'

this guy spent his life investing

and wouldn't spend any money.

And so, basically, there's property worth over 120 grand

and probably many, many thousands

'in the bank.'

-Ooh.

-'It's, er, he's certainly got'

a bond with about 36 grand in it

and he was, um, she knew he had a whole rake of ISAs

because he was advised you shouldn't have everything

'in ISAs, you should invest it elsewhere,

'but he wouldn't do it and he would never spend any money.'

He was really, really frugal.

'He was advised to make a will because he had so much money.'

He could even have made a free will, but he never, ever bothered.

So this could potentially be

even worth even more

than at...at first thought?

Yeah, I think this is going to be quite a sizeable estate.

The guy would just never, ever spend money.

-All right. Thanks a lot.

-'Catch you later, Fran.'

-Cheers.

-'Bye, Paul.'

-Bye.

Now they know this could be a lucrative case,

the pressure is on in the office to find his heirs, fast.

Ronald got a job at Rover in the 1950s, when business was booming.

During the post-war years,

the British government encouraged car manufacturers to export

as many cars as possible

to earn valuable foreign currency to repay the war debts.

Over 75% of Land Rovers produced were exported and, by 1966,

had earned over £300 million of foreign currency for the nation.

The factory was working flat out and Ronald made his money

through hard graft on the shop floor.

His neighbour Bill worked with him.

When he got married, he used to work for a tool company

and he couldn't have the same holidays as his wife

because she worked at Land Rover.

And he left the tool company to go to Land Rover,

so they could have the same holidays together.

Sometimes I'd see him, when he was going to work,

I used to go on my bike and he used to go on the bus.

I was in the paint shop, he was on the assembly line.

They'd have all the bits and pieces

and, like, you would just...

They'd be by the side of the track

and people would be fitting them on as it runs down.

You see, that never stopped.

The only time it stopped was for a break or lunch.

They were coming off every three minutes.

Although it was considered one of the toughest jobs in the factory,

Ronald spent virtually his whole career on the production line.

I don't think he enjoyed it, but it was a job.

You had to work hard and you got your money.

It was OK. It was great.

It gave us a living, you know, and it was always very busy.

Back on the hunt for Ronald's heirs,

Frances updates Tony with the good news about his finances.

Not only did he own the property,

he had quite a number of investments.

He had money here, there and everywhere.

Lots of different ISAs, a bond with 36,000.

So he must have spoken to somebody who told him this?

Yeah. The woman over the road,

who was the only person who still had anything to do with him.

I'd have thought he would have left a will leaving it to her, as well.

No, they were trying to get him to make a will

because of the amount of money he had

and he just never got round to it and never did.

Coming up, if Ronald has any surviving relatives,

they could have serious money coming their way.

There could be more in it than first thought.

Now they need to find the heirs, fast,

or the competition might beat them to it.

In 2010, heir-hunting company Celtic Research

came across the unsolved case of Eleanor Pridmore.

They would uncover a tale of heavy industry,

hard lives and family heartache.

Eleanor died in Sheffield on 5 July, 1989, without a will,

leaving an estate worth almost £23,000.

No living heirs were ever found.

With no-one to arrange her funeral, it was dealt with

by local government officer Michael Turner.

To try and determine what arrangements to make,

we searched Eleanor's home address.

We went through everything in detail,

removed as much documentation

as we were able to find.

And we found a grave paper

giving the details of the grave

in which her late husband had been interred.

We were unable to comply with what I'm sure would have been her wishes.

She was buried with her husband in the family grave

and I think that's the important thing.

We were very pleased in that we are not always able

to ascertain what precise arrangements

the deceased would have wanted for themselves.

So a case like this is a happy conclusion for us.

Michael had managed to bury Eleanor beside her husband,

but, sadly, no family came to the funeral.

21 years later, heir hunter Hector Birchwood took up the case

after he spotted it on the Treasury list of unclaimed estates.

The Treasury Solicitor established a new policy

where they would be advertising very old cases.

So this was one of the cases.

He discovered that she married her husband Wilfred, a van driver, in 1940,

and they were one of the first couples to move into this Sheffield street.

Eleanor is believed to have worked

in one of the city's best-known industries - cutlery.

Sheffield was famous for cutlery before it came famous for steel,

producing cutlery from the 16th century onwards.

When technology was developed that made steel more readily available,

easier to produce, obviously more and more cutlery was produced

and the factory system really started.

Prior to the late 18th century,

production had been really domestic, but then factories took off.

Eleanor is thought to have worked

at one of the city's largest factories as a knife grinder.

It was unusual for women to be employed as grinders.

Most women would have been employed as buffers.

They were the people who polished cutlery and holloware.

Although working conditions had improved considerably since the 19th century,

it was still a tough and dirty job.

Eleanor Pridmore, as a knife grinder,

would have ground the blades.

She would've had a grinding wheel

and the blank blade would have been given to her.

She would have ground it down to its finish sized and put an edge on it.

Very hard work, very dirty work.

She would have been paid on piece work.

She would not have got a wage.

She would have been paid a small amount

for every blade that she ground.

And to make ends meet,

she would have had to have ground several gross in a week.

Eleanor's husband Wilfred died 18 years before her

and Hector discovered that they never had children.

So he had to start piecing together her family tree.

He began by looking for a birth record that Eleanor,

using her maiden name, Bullas,

which he'd found on her marriage certificate.

It revealed that she was born in the village of Shuttlewood,

near Bolsover in Derbyshire, in 1908.

Once we located the birth of the deceased,

we were able to find out the names of her parents.

Her parents were Hannah Taylor and Henry Bullas.

He discovered that Shuttlewood was a former colliery village

and that Eleanor's father Henry had worked as a coal miner.

Coal was the mainstay of the area. It was the main employer.

The only other employ was farming

and there would just be a few hundred men employed

in the whole county - in the whole area - for farming,

whereas there would be thousands of men employed in coal mining.

In this area of Derbyshire,

whole communities relied on the mines for their livelihood.

The Oxcroft Colliery Company employed over 700 men at the time.

Um, Bolsover Colliery, perhaps 700 or 800 men,

and Markham Colliery, probably 1,000 to 2,000 men.

Most companies involved in mining found from an early time

that if they provided houses and amenities for the workforce,

they seemed to keep the men a lot longer.

As well as houses, mining companies built schools

and even pubs for their workers.

It was common for generations of men

to work side by side at the coal face.

Hector found that Eleanor's brother Joseph

had followed in his father's footsteps and gone down the pit.

Most young men came into the mine

because their relations worked in the mine.

They started the lowest of the low.

They would start perhaps sweeping up

or then they would go on to transport.

They'd go from transport on to another job.

If they were quite fit, they might give them jobs shovelling.

Er, or setting props

in areas not on the face, but away from the face,

to prove themselves, and then they would move on.

Because a miner was expected to know every job in the mine

because, one day, his life might depend on it.

It was a well-paid job, but it was also a dangerous one.

Miners suffered greatly from injury,

from small injuries up to loss of limbs.

And it was quite easy to lose fingers

where tubs were being moved about.

If you were hit by a tub, you could suffer quite easily

groin damage, broken legs, broken arms.

Eleanor's brother Joseph suffered with diabetes,

a condition not helped by working down the mines.

Sadly, in 1927, he was injured in an industrial accident

and died the following year aged just 26.

Coming up, another tragedy was to devastate

not just Eleanor's family, but the whole coalmining community.

Everybody knew these people.

They'd probably seen them go to work that morning.

Um, and not seen them return.

Could you be in line for an unexpected windfall?

In the UK, the Treasury has a list of over 2,000 estates

that, over the years, have baffled the heir hunters

and still remain unclaimed.

This is money that could have your name on it.

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

and each one could be worth anything from £5,000

to many millions of pounds.

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

Could they be relatives of yours?

Zable Arabian died in Barnes in London in August 1996.

It's a very unusual name combination.

Does it ring a bell with you? Are you related?

Betty Stebbeds died in Norwich in February 2009.

Stebbeds is a very rare surname in the UK

with less than 100 recorded nationwide.

Could she be a distant family member of yours?

Walter Robshaw died in Keighley, West Yorkshire, in February 1995.

This mediaeval surname derives from one of the area's lost hamlets.

Do you remember him?

If no heirs are found, his money will go to the government.

All these estates are worth at least £5,000, but could be a lot more.

Only successful heirs will be told.

If the names Zable Arabian, Betty Stebbeds or Walter Robshaw

mean anything to you or someone you know,

you could have a fortune coming your way.

Hector Birchwood, at heir-hunting company Celtic Research,

was working on the case of Eleanor Pridmore.

She died 20 years ago in Sheffield without a will,

leaving an unclaimed estate worth £23,000.

Eleanor was born into a coal-mining community in Derbyshire.

Her father was a miner, and her only sibling Joseph

had been injured down the pit, and died without children at just 26.

Hector's next step was to look for aunts and uncles.

His research revealed

that nine years before Joseph's premature death,

the family had been hit by another tragedy.

Eleanor's uncle, James Taylor, also a miner,

had been involved in an horrific underground gas explosion.

It was a Sunday, which, normally, it wouldn't have been worked,

but it was holiday time and the men, I believe,

were going to get some overtime in so they could have a good Easter.

At just 30 years old, he was killed in the blast at the Oxcroft Colliery,

along with five other miners.

To lose a loved one in the mine must have been horrendous...

because they were so tightly knit. Everybody knew these people.

They'd probably seen them go to work that morning.

Um, and not seen them return.

And the village would have been sombre for many months afterwards,

because everybody knew everybody.

It would be a financial hardship, as well,

because there were rents to pay,

there was food to buy and clothing for the children.

There was no welfare state.

It would have been very difficult times

for the families of the ones that died.

And any compensation from the company would be very small.

They may even have lost the house.

Eleanor's family was just one of those devastated by the disaster.

She was only 11 years old when her maternal uncle James was killed.

21 years after Eleanor's death,

Hector decided his best chance of finding living heirs

lay not with her mother's family, but with her father's.

Unlike her mother's name, Taylor,

the paternal name, Bullas, was more unusual.

But he soon realised it had its own problems.

Bullas itself is not altogether a common name,

but it's an area name.

There are a lot of people with the name Bullas in that area.

That can be just as bad as having a name like Taylor,

or Smith, or Jones.

But then Hector found a way of narrowing down the search.

Eleanor's mother's family, the Taylors, were miners.

So when she married a miner, Henry Bullas,

they all ended up living in the same community.

The families, as far as I could tell, worked in the same industry.

Um, from the census material that I found,

they were also living either very close to each other,

or, sometimes, even sharing the same dwellings.

So I can only assume the families lived and worked and ate together.

I wouldn't say it made it easier, but it at least gave us an avenue

by which we could do some research and locate the correct families.

So with the two families living side by side in the census,

Hector knew that he had identified the right relatives.

The next step towards finding her heirs

was to piece together Eleanor's paternal family tree.

He found that her grandfather was Frederick Bullas, a wood sawyer.

I would imagine that Frederick Bullas's work was probably also

linked to the coal-mining industry.

As a wood sawyer,

he would probably be working to make the beams

that would be supporting the tunnel.

Hector discovered that along with Eleanor's father Henry,

Frederick and his wife Ellen had two daughters, Annie and Florence.

Annie had died in her teens, but if Florence had children,

and they were still alive,

they would be beneficiaries to Eleanor's estate.

Hector found that Florence had married Arthur Wilkinson in 1910

and there was more good news.

Records showed they had a daughter, Jessie, the cousin of the deceased.

Once we'd located one of the children for Florence Bullas,

er, we knew that we were almost at the home stretch.

But he wasn't there, yet.

Jessie had died in 1998, a year before Eleanor.

If she'd had children, they would be Eleanor's cousins once removed

and the next beneficiaries in line.

To find out, Hector had to check the record of her marriage,

and it wasn't straightforward.

We had to sift through all the marriages until we found the right one.

Jessie had a son, Clinton, who was no longer alive, and two daughters.

One was living abroad, but Therese, known as Terri,

was in Sutton Coldfield in the Midlands.

At last, Hector had found a living heir and he gave her a call.

It was totally out of the blue.

Er, and I must admit, I thought, "Somebody's winding me up".

He just said it's a relation from my mother's side

and did I know anything about my mother's side of the family.

And I said, "Not a lot."

I can remember when I was very young going up to Sheffield and meeting people.

I can't remember anything else and then, it sort of, like, finished.

My mother never really spoke about her side of the family a lot.

But Terry's intrigued to learn of Eleanor's job as a knife grinder.

I'm very surprised that Eleanor was working in cutlery in Sheffield.

It seems amazing to me, the link with my father.

Terry's dad came from Birmingham,

but also worked in the steel industry.

My father was a consultant metallurgist

and he did a lot of work in Sheffield.

And inheriting a share of Eleanor's estate

has left Terry keen to find out more about her mother's relatives.

It's another side to my life I didn't know about.

That's really made me think, "I'd like to meet these people."

Do they know...do they know about me and my family?

That's... I'd love to find out about that.

Really, really would.

In the end, Hector found nine heirs to Eleanor's £23,000 estate

from her paternal and maternal family.

Once the case was solved, I felt a sense of relief that,

after all that hard work,

we'd been able to manage to find the right families.

And instead of going to the government,

the money Eleanor left behind

is already bringing happiness to her relatives.

I've always loved horses and I've always ridden,

and my daughter's riding now.

So it's got me back into it

and that's why I've treated myself to a horse.

Heir-hunting company Fraser & Fraser

are investigating the case of Ronald Boyne.

He died in Birmingham in December 2010,

leaving an estate worth at least £120,000.

Senior researcher Paul Matthews discovered

that Ronald owned his own home and was a keen saver.

How much cash had he got, then?

Oh... I couldn't tell you.

I mean, at the time...

He's definitely got a bond of £36,000.

What do these properties fetch down here?

Well, if I say as a for instance, just down here, that's up for 120.

Ronald spent most of his working life on the factory assembly line

at Rover, one of Birmingham's major employers.

But, as a young man, he served his country in the army for nine years.

Ronald told neighbour Bill how he couldn't wait to join up.

He didn't get on very well with his mother and father

and he went to live with his nan.

He said, "What I've done then..." He said, "I went to join the army."

And he said, "Not being old enough,"

he said, "I got my nan to sign the papers."

I should think he must have been 17.

Because I think you've got to be 18 to get in.

So that would bring him up to 1944.

After he left the army, Ronald got married in 1952

and his wedding was in keeping with his frugal lifestyle.

They got married in a register office in town,

just him and his wife, nobody went with them.

They got people who worked in the register office

to be witnesses.

They came out and they went and had a cup of tea and a sandwich

at a caff.

The way he told his parents was on a Christmas card and he said...

What he said about that was,

he went and pushed the card through the door

when there were no lights on and they'd gone to bed.

GUNFIRE

As Ronald settled down to married life,

he thought his army days were behind him.

But, four years later, he was recalled

when the Suez crisis broke out.

The Suez crisis came about in 1956

because President Nasser, Colonel Nasser, of Egypt,

decided that the Suez Canal should belong to the Egyptian people

and not a private company owned by the British and the French.

So, overnight, one night, in July 1956,

he nationalised it and took it over,

much to the consternation of the British and the French.

The British Army decided that, along with the French,

it would invade Egypt to regain control of the canal,

a vital route for trade between Europe and the rest of the world.

But Operation Musketeer, as it was known, faced a problem.

When the Suez crisis starts, the British Army are short of an awful lot of soldiers

because, in peace time, the British Army had been shrunk.

So they start recalling soldiers who served in the Second World War

who were still on reserve.

So people like Ronald Boyne find themselves getting his call papers and being called back in again.

An awful lot of men just said "No, I've done my bit in the Second World War,

"you get some other fellas to fight this one for you."

In October, Israel attacked Egypt

and, a month later, the British and French invaded.

But with no support from the Americans,

and the threat of economic sanctions against them, they were forced to retreat.

Suddenly, the politicians find themselves having to pull the army out.

That's hugely embarrassing for the British Army, the British government,

the British people and the British standing in the world.

Suddenly, here were the great imperialists,

who ran big chunks of the globe for so long,

finding themselves kicked out with their tails between their legs,

having not achieved what they set out to do.

Having amassed a great army in Egypt, after just a few weeks,

the soldiers were sent home.

The British force that land there on 5th November

are all withdrawn by 22nd December.

In Ronald's case, he does make it to Egypt. Many of the people called up as reservists,

at the time of Suez, find themselves going to their depots,

getting reissued with uniform,

going through basic training again to get them back up to speed.

But by the time that they themselves onto the ships ready to go,

the whole thing's over and done with.

After doing his duty in Egypt, Ronald returned to Birmingham

and soon settled back into civilian life.

Back on the hunt for heirs, the team had established

that Ronald and his wife did not have children.

The next step was to look for close kin.

From his birth certificate, researcher Michael discovered

that Ronald's parents were James Boyne and Winifred Turrell,

who were married in Birmingham in 1921.

Their son Ronald was born in 1926.

But if they had other children,

they would be first in line to inherit his estate.

If his siblings had died but had children,

as Ronald's nieces and nephews,

they would also be beneficiaries.

Michael began looking for births on their database records.

The names are relatively easy to work.

Boyne is not one that I've come across before.

But the only difficulty was Turrell.

In the heir-hunting game, the right names are crucial.

But Ronald's mother, Winifred Turrell,

was continually changing the spelling of her surname.

She was changing it around and dropping letters

and adding letters, from Turrell with two "Ls"

to Turrell with one "L",

or Turrell spelt T-U-R-R-I-L-L, or E-L-L.

So, therefore...we've had to check every possible variation

on Turrell, just to make sure we haven't missed

any potential siblings of the deceased.

Michael found that Ronald was one of six children.

They all seem to have been born in Birmingham, which has helped.

You can just go through it really quickly.

Ronald's brothers, James and Francis, known as Frank,

and his sisters, Patricia and Annie, are all dead.

If they had children,

as nieces and nephews of the deceased, they would be heirs.

But Ronald's youngest sister Maureen is still alive.

As his closest relative, she is entitled to a share in his estate

and they hope she can put them in touch with any surviving family.

Senior researcher Paul is on his way to meet her.

Amazingly, Maureen had no idea her brother had died,

despite living not far from him in Tamworth near Birmingham.

The office managed to speak to the sister of the deceased.

They have told her the bad news about her brother.

So she is aware, so when I turn up it's on appointment now.

She is expecting us, but she will be aware her brother has died.

But, obviously, she'll probably have a few questions,

a few queries about what actually happened.

It's not the nicest part of the job

when you have to go and see people

and it's a near relative, brother or sister.

But, obviously, it's something that has to be done.

Something I've done in the past, obviously.

Obviously, you get different reactions.

It's not the pleasant side of the job,

but, obviously, it's something we have to do.

And it's better that these near relatives are made aware of what's going on,

as opposed to, basically, never finding out

and the government getting the estate.

-Do come in.

-Pleased to meet you.

Nice to meet you.

OK?

So you're aware of why we're here - sadly your brother has passed away.

Yes, yes.

Obviously, he never made a will, so his estate

was in the process of going to the government.

I gather you haven't seen your brother for many years.

The last time I saw my brother was when I was still at school.

-Really?

-Yes.

And he was in the, um, in the army.

And he brought me, um...

He'd been in Egypt, that was it, and he brought me

a mother-of-pearl necklace, no, bracelet,

and a little bag -

a little leather bag with a camel on it, and I never saw him again.

Oh, right.

We were the sort of family who didn't stay together.

We were the sort of family that you best keep apart!

Because as soon as we get together, we start fighting. SHE LAUGHS

Mum always used to say that with Ronald and Frank...

Now then, what did she used to say? There was a saying.

"Ron used to make the bullets, Frank used to fire them."

So, in other words, they used to get into a bit of trouble. SHE LAUGHS

-You can choose your friends, but not your family.

-That's right.

-You haven't done too bad, have you?

-No.

-You've got the old man.

-Oh, yes.

Isn't he wonderful? He's wonderful.

-When did your dad pass away?

-There again, I don't know.

My mum and dad were divorced after 40 years of marriage.

He went and married again, you see, so, presumably,

they saw the end of him and we didn't.

Right. Any idea roughly how long ago?

Were you made aware when he died?

-No.

-No?

-No.

-Charming.

-No.

-It was that antagonistic, I'm sorry.

-Oh, dear!

-40 years of marriage full of misery.

-I've never met her father.

Oh, right.

-Nor this brother we're talking about.

-Oh, right.

-No, no.

As I said, we're not a family. We stay together.

So most of the family is a bit of a mystery. You'll be glad to get your family tree?

It would be interesting, yes, it would be nice, yes. It would be a start.

Maureen has no idea what she'll do with her inheritance.

I mean, this has come out of the blue, so I haven't got a clue.

In any case, it may be... it may be just a little bit,

it may be... Well, we don't know, do we?

There may be a property involved. Obviously, it's...

-So we will.

-We just don't know.

-Exactly.

-We will know before too long.

-We'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

We obviously think it's an estate that's worthwhile pursuing.

Nice meeting you. All the very best.

It's nice to meet you, as well, yes.

I hope it all comes to fruition.

-Well, thank you very much for speaking to us.

-OK, then, cheers.

-See you.

-Bye-bye.

-Bye-bye now. Take care.

Thank you.

Paul has signed up Maureen as an heir

and he calls Tony in the office to tell him the good news.

Hello.

I've seen Maureen Wright.

Basically, she signed up with us. She's quite happy. Lovely lady.

Um, so we had a good chat. Not too much family information

'because, um, basically,'

she was the youngest, and the whole family just disappeared

and and they didn't bother keeping in touch.

OK, thanks a lot. Have a good day. Bye.

Bye.

Amazingly, she wasn't aware

that her brother who was some 14 years older than her

had died in Birmingham

not that many miles' distance from her.

You know,

it's, um, the way that the, um,

world seems to be going lately.

So the Boyne family had grown apart

and Ronald had little or no contact with his brothers and sisters.

Over in France, Tony has tracked down another heir.

She's Ronald's niece through his brother Frank

and she has her own story of why they grew apart.

She advised me that the...

that the father had fallen out with her Uncle Ronald many years ago.

She's not too sure precisely what it was,

but she thought it was possibly over an argument about a dog called Rex.

Not too sure whether that was the deceased's dog,

or the heir's father's dog.

Or what the heir's father's dog, if it was the heir's father's dog,

did or didn't do.

But, that seems to be the reason

that the deceased hasn't spoken to the rest of his brothers and sisters for many years.

Meanwhile, Michael has been looking for heirs

from Ronald's sister Patricia.

She died in her 50s, leaving behind four children.

But, sadly, records reveal

none of them is entitled to any of Ronald's money.

They were all put up for adoption

and, therefore, lost their right to inherit from their birth family.

In the end, along with his sister Maureen

and his niece in France, the team found three more heirs

to Ronald's estate through his brother Frank -

another niece, a great-niece and a great-nephew.

They've been quite good names to research.

They've stayed in the same area, more or less.

So it's actually been relatively quick and easy to do.

We've got five heirs,

all of which seem to be more than happy with it all.

So, overall, it's been a very good case.

And it's Ronald's sister Maureen who will inherit

the most from her brother's estate.

She is entitled to half of everything he left behind.

It's slightly more valuable than we thought it was.

We'll wait to see when we get the accurate figures back,

but we were looking at £100,000 -

the figure may be nearer £200,000, so quite a large estate.

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