Mrs. Merrick’s attorney had a problem. She needed to find two missing heirs but had little to go on; only names with no other identifying information. Mrs. Merrick set up a living trust twenty years before her death, but never updated it, making this heir search more difficult. She left her large estate to Mary Danielson and Mitchell Roberts or their heirs. That was it; no additional information as to her relationship with Mary and Mitchell, or their ages or location. The attorney’s firm was the trustee because Mrs. Merrick’s father had dealings with the firm in years past, but no one at the firm knew anything about her other than the fact that she was a widow and had no children.
Before publishing notices and spending vast amounts of time and resources trying to find Mary and Mitchell, the attorney asked us to track them down. Locating missing heirs or unknown heirs is just one of the services conducts. We started with genealogical research on Mrs. Merrick and her husband Gerhard. Chances were good that Mary and Mitchell were related to Mr. or Mrs. Merrick; after all, blood is thicker than water. After researching genealogy records, old newspapers and other public records, we discovered that Mary was the sister of Mr. Merrick and Mitchell was an old family friend who acted as best man at the Merrick’s wedding.
Mitchell was still alive, but Mary died before Mrs. Merrick. In her last years, Mrs. Merrick was so ill, she didn’t know her sister-in-law died. Finding Mary’s children was where it really got interesting – one died in childhood and the other had married and moved to Canada. The Canadian was hard to find, but in the end, Mrs. Merrick’s attorney was able to find the lost heirs without leaving her office or putting out a lot of effort. She left that to .
-Brenda McGinley, CEO, All in Investigations
-Brenda McGinley, Director of Operations,
