CRIV CONNECTION

Author: Mary Jenkins, Library and Research Services Manager at Devine, Millimet & Branch, PA

Many of the same research approaches and information resources used for people finding more generally can be applied to locating contact information for heirs and beneficiaries, although heir research brings with it special attention to accuracy since so much could be riding on the results. As with any public records and people search research, information professionals run into challenges like people who move around a lot, who do not want to be found, and who are minors.

Law firms and other organizations may turn this specialized research over to a company like HeirSearch for their forensic genealogy services or one of the others doing research in this space like ProGenealogists, HeirPros, AGHS, Ancestor Introductions, and others. (This post does not review or recommend vendors; it simply names some sources that may be useful to researchers and their users.) But when the work is done in-house, legal information professionals can turn to a host of resources that may already be available to them. Unlike traditional genealogy research, searching for heirs and beneficiaries tends to be a matter of looking at generations following, rather than preceding, a person of interest. Often, the requester knows names and basic contact information for the heirs, which is a significant help and allows the researcher to employ standard people finding skills using resources like public records on Lexis or Westlaw, and services like TLOxp, Skopenow, and the like.

But when there is scant information about potential beneficiaries, or the requester needs to know of any progeny or relations, creative and determined law librarians may turn to a range of resources, including:

• Ancestry.com or other genealogical sites to trace relationships and locations. These sites often rely on other data sources like vital records and other online genealogy records and collections.
• Findagrave.com to trace relations a generation or two back.
• Obituaries for evidence of relatives and locations, sometimes especially helpful for references to minors and close friends
• Newspapers.com or other local newspaper or magazine sources for stories or announcements that might mention the subjects of the search, like high school awards and sports achievements, marriage and birth announcements, civic engagement, and more.

Information gleaned from these sources may then help the researcher with additional details to facilitate finding current contact information through more commonly used public records resources, which often have fairly limited relatives’ information.

Researchers will want to demonstrate their due diligence, noting weak connections and uncertain information. To have confidence in results, we typically like to see contact details or relationships recorded in two or more sources to have confidence in it so we should remark on unverified information.

There are times when a commercial, specialized heir search service is warranted. Trusts and estates practitioners will typically make that decision, and they should never have to pay a percentage of the estate as the fee. It can be helpful, though, to have some other tools in mind to help triangulate the data and find the people who may elude the researcher using a public records database alone.