Extraordinarily in 2025, it is easier than it has ever been to steal the estate of someone who has passed away.
The government website Bona Vacantia contains the names of 6,000 people whose estates haven’t been claimed by anyone. It is freely available online and has been for a while.
Whilst we at Altor are fans of information and government services moving online to become more efficient, there followed in 2017 a bad development. Grant of Probate was moved online in this year, allowing heirs to claim estates using a simple online service.
On the face of it this was a good move and for the majority of people claiming probate it was certainly preferable to attending the local probate office in person (particularly once Covid hit a couple of years later). Unfortunately it seems that the system was built to be too simple with no safeguards.
Fraudsters have been using the combination of the freely available data on Bona Vacantia, with the online probate service to apply for the estates of people who have died without wills and with no known heir. In some cases distant relatives have been approached by heir hunting companies (also using Bona Vacantia) to help them claim their genuine inheritance, only to be told that a stranger has already seized the house and sold it.
This is lucrative business given house prices in the UK and the fact that less than half of people have wills.
A BBC investigation found multiple instances of overseas criminals running a network of companies to claim these probates, often using the same names and even handwriting. It is so shambolic as to be funny, if it were not so infuriating that successive governments have been letting them get away with it. Incredibly there doesn’t seem to be any assessment by the Probate Service of the damage that has already been done.
It is not just families that are missing out on this money, but HMRC are also losing out. In each of the cases the BBC investigated the probate application listed the assets of the estate at just below £325,000. Clearly this is to avoid inheritance tax and speed the process up. If the system was working properly, these estates would be valued properly and the proper tax paid.
The only way to protect against this happening to your own family is to make sure that everyone has a will, that is up to date. It is also important to discuss with family what their wishes are (this is the part of the process that is most commonly ignored), we are not great about talking about our own deaths, but it is so important to make sure that family know. If you have elderly relatives in the family, sensitively raise the subject with them. Make sure they know that your intention is to ensure their wishes are known and met.
We are currently drafting wills and lasting powers of attorneys for our clients from our offices in Hook, Hampshire and throughout the UK.