[WSBAPT] Heir search company needed - Any suggestions?

[Dan Roach]

Greetings from Walla Walla:

First, many thanks to all for the substantial wisdom shared by so many of you over the years on this listserve. Just this week I searched the emails and found numerous responses to inquiries (going back to 2009) about reasonable and acceptable PR fees, which responses I used to support a request for a client in a less than ordinary estate administration.

I feel indebted to many of you. If ever I can be of assistance in estate matters in my corner of the state, feel free to contact me.

On to my question:

We need to hire a diligent and effective heir search company to find a lot of people in an intestate estate administration. The decedent (in her sixties when she died) had no spouse, no descendants, no siblings (living or deceased) and thus no nieces or nephews, and no living ancestors.  Her father had at least four siblings (one living) and her mother had at least seven siblings (one may still be living). We have bits and pieces of information regarding a few of the living and deceased descendants of the decedent's aunts and uncles, but not much. We are still looking under rocks for clues.

To what professional search firm do we turn?  Thanks for any information you can provide about heir search firms that any of you have successfully utilized that have put together pretty complete maternal and paternal family trees, with current addresses of the living heirs.

This isn't a large estate but, thankfully, there's enough in the estate to make it worth undertaking the effort.

Six or eight years ago I actually assisted the decedent with the administration of her father's estate, which she inherited. At that time, upon learning about her family situation, I warned her (more than once over those months) that it was going to be a chocolate mess when she died if she didn't have her estate planning matters in order, starting with a Will. She agreed and assured me that she would get to it.  After we closed her father's estate, I never heard from her again. It was a coincidence that her estate landed in my office after her recent death.

As ever,

Dan

Daniel J. Roach, PLLC
P.O. Box 1776
Walla Walla, WA  99362

(509) 522-6800

dan at danroachlaw.com<mailto:dan at danroachlaw.com>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/wsbapt/attachments/20150610/8a03fb53/attachment.html>