A worked demonstration for the person carrying the liability — the personal representative, and whoever advises or insures them. The case below is real, and presented without names.
The guided demonstration
Six screens, one sentence each — what the practice finds, what it costs to miss, and the document nobody else hands over. Real cases, real figures, derived as you read them.
The government publishes people who died leaving money and no known heir. Five and a half thousand of them. Every one is a person somebody could not identify.
These are past the 30-year claim bar, so nobody can claim them — which makes them the only ones where we can show the working, named, with nothing held back.
Every grant of representation the search has found, ranked by what is worth opening first: does a will exist, can it be ordered today, and how long before the claim bar closes it.
A million-pound estate with a valid will, two codicils and executors who acted — and it still reached the Crown. Fourteen residuary shares, four addressed only care of somebody else.
TIME-BARRED — no claim by anyone is now possible. Net estate £475,235, stated by the grant. A will left everything to a named sister; she never proved it, nobody ever claimed, and in March 2026 the bar closed the estate forever.
will + grant read · net £475,235 grant-stated · 5 pages · 5 references
That same estate went wrong quietly: a named beneficiary died first, the share lapsed, and an intestacy opened that nobody was looking for. A personal representative who misses someone is liable personally, for twelve years, and the claim follows the money.
See the case belowThe negative, with its own scope on its face: which names, which registers, on what dates — and it refuses to call itself exhaustive until it is. That is the document a court, an underwriter or a claimant's solicitor would be shown.
TIME-BARRED — the thirty-year bar fell on 22 August 2026 and the case has since come off the Crown's register. No claim by anyone is now possible. Retained as a worked example, not as an opinion on entitlement.
7 pages · 25 references
The position you are actually in
A personal representative who distributes to the wrong people, or who misses someone entitled, is answerable out of their own pocket. Closing the estate account does not close the liability.
General principle of the law of administration; the statutory protections below exist precisely because the default position is personal liability.
A beneficiary may claim their share of the estate for up to twelve years after the right arose — long after the file has been closed, the fee billed and the residue paid out.
Limitation Act 1980; twelve years for a claim to the personal estate of a deceased person.
A missed beneficiary is not confined to suing the representative. They can follow the assets into the hands of the people who received them. Your beneficiaries, who have spent it, become the defendants.
Tracing and following into the hands of recipients; the reason a s.27 notice protects the representative and not the distribution.
A statutory notice protects you against claims you had no notice of. It does nothing about a person you KNEW might exist and could not find — which is the commonest way an estate goes wrong.
Trustee Act 1925, s.27.
A correctly administered estate that still went wrong
A widower dies leaving a valid will, professionally drawn, with two codicils. Executors are appointed and act. Net estate over one million pounds. Nothing about this file looks difficult.
Residue is left to fourteen named persons and charities in equal shares. Every share is spelled out. There is no substitution clause and no gift-over — which is a drafting choice, not a mistake.
One named beneficiary dies before the testator does. Three months after the will was signed, and four years before the death.
That share lapses. With nothing in the will to catch it, it cannot pass under the will at all. It falls into PARTIAL INTESTACY and goes to the deceased's own blood relatives — people the will never mentions and nobody has been looking for.
Two codicils were executed after that death — one within a fortnight of it — and neither redirected the share. This is not carelessness; it is a fact nobody had cause to check.
The share went unclaimed to the Crown. The deceased had no children and no siblings, so the people entitled were cousins — findable, but only by a search nobody had commissioned.
No one in this story did anything obviously wrong. The estate was properly administered by professionals. A residuary share still failed, an intestacy still opened, and money still went to the Crown instead of to a family. ⚠ That is the risk a representative carries whether or not they know it is there.
The five protections — and what each one leaves open
Rows marked ● evidence-led cannot be relied on without a documented search. That is three of the five.
| Protection | What it does | ⚠ What it does not do | What it needs from you |
|---|---|---|---|
| Statutory advertisementTrustee Act 1925, s.27 | Notice in The London Gazette and a newspaper local to the deceased, giving at least two months. Protects you personally against claims from people you did not know about. | ⚠ Does not protect the assets — a claimant can still follow the money to whoever received it. Does not help at all where you knew of a person and could not trace them. | Proof of correct publication and of the enquiries made alongside it. |
| Full and exhaustive enquiriesthe duty itself ● evidence-led | The representative has a positive duty to take all reasonable steps to find a beneficiary. Discharging it properly is what makes every other protection on this list available to you. | ⚠ Not a protection in its own right. Undocumented enquiries are, in evidential terms, enquiries that did not happen. | ⚠⚠ A written record of every search: which instrument, which name forms, which jurisdictions, which dates, and what each one returned — including the ones that returned nothing. |
| Benjamin orderan order of the court ● evidence-led | Permits you to distribute on a stated assumption — typically that a person predeceased or left no issue. A full discharge for the representative. | ⚠ Does not extinguish the beneficiary's claim; they may still pursue the recipients. Costs court time and money. | ⚠⚠ The court must be satisfied the enquiries were exhaustive. That satisfaction is an evidential exercise, and thin evidence is where these applications fail. |
| Missing beneficiary indemnityinsurance ● evidence-led | Pays out if a claimant surfaces later. Faster and usually cheaper than an application to court, and lets the estate be wound up now. | ⚠ Does not stop the claim being made. An underwriter may decline, limit cover, or price for the uncertainty you leave them holding. | ⚠⚠ The same evidence, and it decides whether cover is available at all. Research that closes out a named missing person moves the case from 'known risk' to 'comfort' cover, which is cheaper — and known-risk cases are harder to place. |
| Retain a reservehold funds back | Keeps money available against a later claim. | ⚠ Ties the estate up, delays every other beneficiary, and the size of the reserve is a guess unless the risk has been quantified. | An assessment of how likely the missing person is to exist at all. |
The four questions that would have caught it
We are not insurers, we are not solicitors, and nothing here is advice. Three of the five protections above run on the same input — a documented, exhaustive search — and that record is what we produce.