While unfortunate, people are often estranged or otherwise separated from loved ones and relatives. If a beneficiary cannot be found when someone passes away in California, the inheritance is placed with the county controller or collector, depending on the county and with some exceptions.
Locating Beneficiaries: How to Find Missing Heirs in California
It is the responsibility of the estate administrator to locate beneficiaries to a will or trust. To do so, the estate administrator can:
- Talk to friends and family of the deceased
- Advertise in the local newspaper
- Check in with last known employers
- Send letters to previously known addresses
- Search online, either through public records or with a skip tracing service
- Search real estate and personal property indexes in counties in which they used to reside.
When all else fails, or if the administrator of the estate does not have the capacity to conduct this search on their own, a private investigator can be hired.
What if an Heir or Beneficiary Cannot Be Found?
A few things can happen if an heir or beneficiary cannot be found. Probate courts may get involved and make a ruling on the dispensation of the property, or the property (or its market value) will be held by the county controller for five years.
After five years, if every effort has been made to find the beneficiary and they have not surfaced, the property will be distributed to the rest of the heirs and beneficiaries as appropriate by the estate administrator.
Estate Administrator Must Exercise Due Diligence
Before property belonging to the heir or beneficiary is divided amongst those remaining, the estate administrator must show that they exercised due diligence. This means that they must have done everything reasonably possible to locate the missing beneficiary.
In essence, you can’t just ask a few friends and family members, you have to exhaust every possible contact. Instead of the estate administrator just checking the last known address, he should try sending mail to several addresses to see if one gets forwarded, etc.
A good example of this is the publication requirement. Part of the due diligence that the estate administrator must perform before proceeds can be divided amongst the remaining heirs includes advertising in local newspapers. You should advertise in newspapers that the missing beneficiary would reasonably access, which means you may need to publish in newspapers in the state of their last known address rather than where the deceased lived.
In addition, California probate law dictates that your advertisements must run for several consecutive weeks. It is recommended that you run the ads for six weeks in total.
Missing Beneficiaries: The Importance of Making Well-Documented Inquiries
- Because California probate courts require that the estate administrator performs due diligence before redistributing property from a will or trust, documentation of such activities is of the utmost importance. There is a variety of documentation that might help you make your case, including:
- Logs of every individual that you talk to, how they are related to the beneficiary or the deceased, when you talked to them, where, and the results of that conversation.
- Send mail to last known addresses with “Return Service Requested” marked on the envelopes so that you get them back if they can’t be delivered. This gives you proof that they were indeed sent. You can also keep your receipts from the post office.
- Make a detailed list of last known addresses, employers, haunts, and acquaintances, log when you checked out each one, how, and the result.
- Make sure your private investigator also documents their efforts and findings well, if you need to hire one.
Order Declaring the Beneficiary Deceased or Absentee
Once you are able to prove that you did your due diligence for five years and the beneficiary still cannot be found, you could petition the court to declare the beneficiary deceased. By doing so, the property automatically becomes part of the now deceased beneficiary’s estate and will be distributed to their heirs and beneficiaries as provided for in their own will. However, if the newly announced deceased has no formal will, estate, or heirs of their own, the property reverts to the original estate and is redistributed accordingly.
