Problem regarding a relative who died intestate?? please help if you can....?

My grandmother was recently phoned by a solicitor and told she was adopted at birth. At 80 this came as a shock. It was her aunty however that apparently adopted her. My gran has no birth certificate or adoption certificate and has no knowledge of either. The solicitor said that her biological sister, who she knew as her cousin, has died and she is to share in the estate as the sister didn鈥檛 leave a will. This will be on the grounds that she has not been adopted; as if she was she has no claim to any part of the estate.

My question is if they fail to find either document or if the birth certificate is not in the biological mothers name then will my gran still be attributed a share of the estate?

We have no information as to whether she was adopted or not, but it would appear her mum was in fact her aunty. My Gran has no idea how to proceed. Many thanks. Jim

Forgot to add that this is from a UK (England) Law perspective

Your grandmother's birth must have been registered. Therefore it must be possible to trace a birth certificate. You should be able to discover the relevant register office from this link.http://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/births...

How did the solicitor know that she was adopted? Either the aunty passed her off as her own (that has been known to happen) and registered her as her own child or she she must have been legally adopted, in which case the paperwork must exist. Again the above link should help.

I can't quite understand your Gran's family tree, but this link should help in working out her position. http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/ihtmanual...

I do wish you and your Gran well in sorting out this problem.

This is tough - I don't have a specific answer for you, especially because you are in the UK legal system, but I would imagine there should be a special provision for adoption. If you can locate your grandmother's adpotion paperwork, that would be the first step toward getting her a share of the inheritance. Adoption is a legally binding contract that includes the same rights and privileges to estate holdings as blood-related family members.

You can find a complete overview of legal considerations for will preparation, estate and inheritance laws at this site. For UK specific laws, I would consult your local parliament for laws regarding adoption and estate.

There are people and firms who deal with this sort of thing. They sort it out for you on a no win, no fee basis. I would phone your own solicitor or lawyer for information. If you have an old family firm of solicitors they may even have the information somewhere in their files.

Apply for Grant of Probate then you control what's going on stuff the solicitors . cost yah 90 quid uk law.

I would have thought that if she is truly a sibling then nothing can change that, if she was adopted by her aunt then it was probably just a family agreement nothing in writing so should not count in a court of law.

It may help if you try this link: < www.bonavacantia.gov.uk > if you have trouble just google 'bonavacantia' ..its a legal expression meaning 'owner less goods' for the situation where people die 'intestate'. You are on the right tracks as if a person is adopted then they acquire the same rights as if they had been born into the adopted family but don't have any rights into the family of their natural birth. There is a useful flow chart of those relationships entitled and not entitled which you might be able to follow. Maybe the 'adoption' or 'non adoption' all those years ago was done or not done properly as the case may be which will decide your Grans entitlement. A natural sister / brother is about the closest next of kin apart from a spouse and it was often the case with families of your Gran's age for informal adoptions to be made which would mean Gran is entitled. I would think your Gran would be better off consulting a specialist solicitor rather than a win / no win agent as there are some people who, quite legally scan the death notices & those trying to trace lost relatives and offer to do the family tree genology research for a ( usually fairly big ) % of any estate. Although your comments are a little confusing / conflicting it does sound as if the solicitor who has made contact with you is already well on the way to sorting it so let them continue Hope she's lucky.
Edit: between us, c.turk , jzd and myself are basically agreed on what should happen IF certain circumstances exist. As I initially said your comments are a little confusing and I do not say this to offend you. Rightly or wrongly, as I read your situation: IF your Aunty 'properly' adopted your Gran then your Grans inheritance rights are linked to your Aunty's family descendency and as equally strong, or weak, as any blood ties of your Aunty. If your Gran was the blood sister of the deceased then by being properly adopted by another family that will remove your Gran from the immediancy of inheritance from her blood sister and her blood links are lost in favour of any adoptive family links she has aquired into that adoptive family. Hence why it would make sense for someone to say that because your Gran was not properly adopted she has, perhaps fortunately, retained her blood inheritance rights which would have been lost to her had she been properly adopted into another family. Whatever else, ( see JZD's response ) you say the deceased died intestate so there can not be a known will in existence otherwise it wouldn't be an intestate situation. Obviously you'll proceed carefully and don't sign anything you do not totally understand.

I would request from the solicitor whatever proof he has that what he's telling you is true. If he believes it enough to tell her, he's got some sort of proof. Once you have a copy of that, if it exists, I would recommend contacting your own attorney (solicitor) to represent your grandmother's interests in this matter.

Sounds sort of like a scam, to me.... but I'm not sure how that type of information could be used to scam someone... Maybe by getting her emotions involved and then asking for money to pay for legal fees?? I dunno.. it just sort of feels hinky... y'know? Proceed with caution, and use a different solicitor.

Caicos Turkey's answer above is correct as regards process

However, this situation smells fishier than a Bird's Eye factory.
It is inconceivable that a solicitor would telephone out of the blue with this news. He'd write and ask your grandmother to attend a meeting.
Unless he had all the documentation, how on earth could he be certain there was an adoption. And if he's so certain, what's all this wild-goose chase about documents for?

In any event, the legal information he has given is wrong. The rules of intestacy apply to adopted children as well as to natural ones.
I have a very strong suspicion that there is more to this than meets the eye.
The first thing needs to happen is for this 'solicitor' (for whom does he act?) to set out the position entirely in writing, and to show your gran a copy of the will etc etc.

Then your gran needs to get legal advice. If the estate is worth 拢50 then either way it's not worth the candle. If it's worth 拢500,000 then I'm afraid I'd take a rather more pro-active approach.

Your gran needs independent legal advice; rather than running around chasing down documents which may or may not exist and appear to me to be pretty much irrelevant to the issue in hand anyway.
I think it'll emerge pretty quickly whether this is a genuine matter, but ineptly handled, or a rather more sinister scam.