Long story short, I’m in the process of writing a will, and two of my children are estranged. I would like to leave them some inheritance (not a lot, because the little shits are estranged, obviously!) but just curious how an executor goes about finding them if I have no details as to their contact information, or whether indeed they are still known by their birth names.
Cheers.
ETA, this is in Australia, not the US. And no, I cannot afford a private investigator to find out their locations.
Do you have something equivalent to our US Social Security number? A national ID number?
How hard is an executor required to search, or would they therwise leave the money in trust until the beneficiary is found? I presume search costs (PI etc.) would come out of the general overall estate…
Yes and no. We do have ‘customer reference numbers’ for any dealings with our version of ‘social security’ but those numbers are issued when a person applies for themselves. I have no idea what their numbers might be, if you get what I’m saying. Those numbers aren’t issued at birth, they are issued when a person applies for support when they reach 18 years of age.
I guess that’s sort of what I’m asking. I suspect one of the kids might have changed his name by deed-poll (officially relinquishing his birth name to adopt another name) but I’m pretty sure the other is still going by his birth name.
One thing in my favour I think is that the kids’ last name is extremely rare here in Australia. And combined with their given-names, there would probably be only them noted. But yeah, I reckon the kid who has discarded his birth name has probably already discarded his surname too…there-in lies my conundrum.
How does the government track you or distinguish one person from another then? Say for taxes or other dealings?
Well I’m sure the government knows who the kids are. But I don’t. That is the question I’m asking…would an executor of a will be entitled to government information about the location of said kids?
I only know the US, but there are Australians here who might know. I think at least one lawyer. I don’t recall who most of them are, though. Maybe
@Princhester?
Did you Google it yet, or ask another AI?
As I understand it, it’s not up to you – the person whose will is being written – to find the beneficiaries. It’s up to your executor, who is likely going to be tasked with doing “due diligence” to locate your kids after you pass. That may involve doing legal searches, posting public notices, etc., including, potentially, hiring an investigator to locate them (the cost of which would probably come out of your estate).
Now, your executor will probably have you provide as much information as you can on your heirs as part of drawing up the will and the estate documents.
But she says
I’m really curious how the government knows who anyone is over there.
This Reddit discussion on that exact topic indicates that, while there is no equivalent to a Social Security number in Australia, they do have:
However, it also sounds like (as @kambuckta alluded to) Australia has some pretty powerful privacy laws, which generally prohibit the government from disclosing a person’s government-related identifier.
What it doesn’t touch on is the heart of the question: what can an executor in Australia actually use?
The government knows who everyone is, but I don’t know if the executor of my will will be privy to that information.
This may be worth asking a local lawyer who specializes in this area of the law, to learn just how feasible it will be to locate your estranged children, given how little information you have about them.
At least here in the U.S., AIUI, distribution of an estate can be tied up in probate until all heirs have been located; in your case, if that’s also true in Australia, it would mean that the rest of your estate wouldn’t be able to be distributed (to the rest of your heirs) until your executor either (a) is able to find both of your kids, or (b) files to the court that they have done due diligence and not been able to locate them.
Depending on what else you are leaving to other people, you might decide it may not be worth the hassle and delay in order to try to leave a little bit of money to your estranged, and difficult to locate, children.
I am consulting a solicitor next week who hopefully will be able to give me some more insight into the procedures involved. But you might well be right, and it might not be feasible to spend any extra energy or expense in finding the ‘lost’ kids. Oh well. Too bad, so sad.
I’m in England and my local solicitor is the executor of my will.
I recently updated the will (sadly a couple of beneficiaries had passed) and asked my solicitor about tracing folk named in the will.
Apparently these tracers are called ‘Probate Researchers’ and there is a BBC program about their work:
This sort of thing is well outside my field. I suspect that it would be possible to use government sources to track people down armed with a court order. But obtaining that may be expensive. Whether it can be done by executors by a cheap administrative process I don’t know.
One thing that would help is adding info to the will packet, and probably not a formal part of the will since you might want to change or add to it, with what info you do have on them such as dates of birth, original registered names, schools they went to and so on. That should at least make it easier for anyone tasked with tracking them down.
A previous federal government almost lost an election on introducing an ‘Australia Card’ which would fulfil the national ID role. Medicare, Tax File Nos and other national ID numbers are considered private between you and your bureaucrat.
A common thing here is public notices in the papers and the London Gazette saying something like, 'all persons having a claim on the estate of the late XXX, deceased 24-5-2026 at Luton, contact [named lawyer] by (date) after which the executors will take steps to distribute the estate, having regard only to the claims of which they have been notified ’
I can only speak for English law, but this kind of thing tends to run along very similar lines in most common law jurisdictions.In England, the executors are under a duty to make “reasonable efforts” to locate missing beneficiaries (which of course isn’t a very precise obligation). To this end, they can use different methods, such as newspaper notices of the kind described or professional tracing agencies. If, despite “reasonable efforts”, a missing beneficiary can’t be located, there are different ways for the executors to get out of this conundrum. One would be to apply to the court for a “Benjamin order”, which is a court ruling permitting the executors to proceed under the assumption that the missing beneficiary is dead (and giving them protection from liability if they do turn up eventually). Another way of relief is offered by section 63 of the Trustees Act 1925, which allows executors to pay the missing beneficiary’s share into the court (from which that beneficiary, after showing up, can collect it).
I’ve also heard that there is tailored “missing beneficiary insurance” that executors can buy to protect themselves against the liability risk of a beneficiary turning up unexpectedly; but I would imagine that in those cases where such insurance would be most useful, that risk would be factored into the price of the policy.
ETA: Ninja’ed by an actual expert: @Schnitte
In US use, that is called a creditor’s claim notice and is required on nearly every probate everywhere. It’s a bit of a legal fiction, a formality where publishing that notice is some local newspaper-like publication is required, and then as a matter of law, there’s an assumption that anyone who had a claim actually read that and was thereby notified.
And in US use, there’s a deadline of some fixed number of days after notice is published by which any creditor must contact the executor or their claim is extinguished as a matter of law. That duration is, like most stuff in US law, set at the state level and varies form state to state. But 6 months is a common duration.
All of that is about creditors, not heirs. AFAIK, in general US practice there is no similar notice period for heirs. AFAIK, @kenobi_65 got it: the executor is required to perform due diligence and if they come up empty handed, explain that to the probate court and get leave to distribute the estate absent those heirs. What constitutes enough diligence to satisfy the court is a big unknown. At least to me.
As it happens I’m in a semi-similar situation. No kids, two brothers roughly my age, each of whom is very difficult to deal with administratively for different reasons. One could surely use a chunk of my money when I’m done with it, the other less so. Both have a kid who could also benefit.
But I find the idea of saddling any executor, trustee, or financial institution (via a POD/TOD order) with that mess really hard to do. There are other people closer to me who I’m not wanting to leave held up by the bro’s administrative intransigence.
As such, my own paperwork is in a sort of limbo after my other recent major life changes. I’ll get it fixed some time in 2026 almost for sure, but right now it’s a nervous situation.