A number of different departments in Local Authorities will, from time to time, need to find the next-of-kin of a deceased person. The need might arise with regard to funerals under s.46 Public Health Act; or with regard to a deceased client service user of adult social care/client finance/ appointeeship & deputyship; or from the empty homes team in the private sector housing department. The common factor is that a person will have passed away and nothing is known of their family. The Council will usually need the next-of-kin either to make the funeral arrangements, receive the funds held by the Council on behalf of the deceased client service user or move the empty home through probate so it can be brought back into use.
Hey cousin – we’re related!
Often, it will have been confidently asserted that “…there is no next-of-kin…” and a referral to the relevant Bona Vacantia authority looks on the cards. However, the starting point is that even where nothing at all is known about the family of the deceased, it is highly likely that there will be one – they will almost certainly have left surviving and traceable next-of-kin. This is because the rules defining next-of-kin for this purpose are very generous – the degrees of kinship range from the deceased’s surviving spouse[1] all the way out to the issue of the deceased’s uncles and aunts of the half-blood. The eligibility of these eight classes of kin, coupled with the national demographic, make it more or less inevitable that surviving and traceable relatives are walking around, perhaps unaware of their relationship to the deceased[2]. If this were not true, genealogy would not be the world’s most popular pastime and the probate genealogy industry would not exist.
Lean on me
Increasingly, the public sector is reaching out to the private sector for help – outsourcing has been a thing for years and years – and we work hard to clear up matters that are causing our Local Authority clients problems as set out above. Our service is free of charge to Local Authorities but we take our duty as temporary custodian of the Council’s reputation very seriously – everything we do when we’re working on a referral from you, reflects on you and we conduct ourselves accordingly.
Our friends in the treasury
In the vanishingly small number of cases where a deceased has left an estate but no surviving next-of-kin in any of the eight eligible classes to inherit it, the Bona Vacantia authorities take an interest and, in the absence of any prior claim, will administer the estate in favour of the Crown or either of the Duchies of Cornwall or Lancaster as the case may be. On the rare occasions, we prove an estate to be Bona Vacantia, we refer the matter to the Bona Vacantia authorities on behalf of our Council clients, completing the necessary formalities so they don’t have to. However, although they might have a role to play in the final analysis, a referral to the Bona Vacantia authorities is absolutely the last resort, once all reasonable systematic enquiries have drawn a blank. Indeed, the Head of Bona Vacantia is on the record saying:
“Our position is that over 80% of estates referred to GLD each year are not Bona Vacantia, we should aim to give up the Crown’s interest in such estates as quickly as possible. Ideally, of course, our preference would be that these estates are not referred to here in the first place as it is not appropriate that GLD is used as a tracing agent for missing kin or executors. Furthermore, it is our view that before anyone refers an estate to GLD they should be as sure as they can be that the state is, in fact, Bona Vacantia.”
Do you need to locate next-of-kin? Contact nickbeetham@fraserandfraser.co.uk or 07850 739812 anytime.
[1] Or registered civil partner. Perhaps ironically, the only class of kin not to contain a blood relative.
[2] Consider – like you, I have two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, 16 great-great-grandparents, and so on. They are not unique to me just as yours are not unique to you – probably we share at least one common ancestor, say, nine or 10 generations ago. Like Danny Dyer, we’re all practically royalty!
EXPLORE