At Kings Court Trust, we deal with a variety of different estates and we are sometimes faced with complex intestacies when someone dies without a Will. In this blog post, we share two particularly complicated case studies where family tree research has been required to identify the entitled heirs, all of which could have been avoided by leaving a Will.

Mrs J was widowed and lived in Birmingham. Mrs J left behind her two children (Jackie and Jim) and four grandchildren. At the time of her death, she was a renting tenant, had small cash assets and had accounts with various institutions. Kings Court Trust were instructed to complete the estate administration one month after Mrs J’s death. Her estate appeared to be straightforward, except for one thing. A few years before Mrs J passed, her brother died. Mrs J inherited her late brother’s property in the Republic of Ireland.

Sometimes we get some really unusual cases here at Kings Court Trust; the outcome is sometimes a complete surprise to us. For example, what happens in the event of a will being destroyed?