If you have been placed in charge of executing a will, you like we have a lot on your mind. Between sorting out finances, interacting with the friends and family the deceased, and learning more than you would ever have imagined you would learn about tax code and financial legalities, executing a will can be quite the time (and energy) consumer! Nonetheless it is a helpful, necessary, and noble thing to do, and in that sense, it can be quite rewarding. (Especially when the complications don’t become too overwhelming!)

What are the most common complications that will executors have to deal with? One of the most problematic can sometimes be finding the heirs in the first place. Perhaps you, as the will executor, do not have the same close relationship with the heir that the deceased person did. And perhaps not even the deceased person was in touch with the heir during the last months of his or her life. This can be especially common in the case of deceased persons who outlived most of their closest friends and family and ended up leaving their possessions to a distant relative. However, every case is different, and missing heirs can occur in virtually any circumstance. When they do, hiring an heir search service is oftentimes a necessity. 

There are a number of other reasons to hire an heir search service even if the large and obvious problem of not locating an heir does not arise. For example, you may already know that a certain heir has passed away — but obtaining that person’s death certificate in order to validate legal processes may be rather complicated. Similarly, you may simply need to confirm certain bits of information about heirs, such as the exact nature of their relationship with the deceased or their current names (which may have changed due to marriage or other changes in circumstance.) 

Last but not least, you may find that it is actually impossible to locate any of the deceased person’s heirs. In this case, you will need documentation of due diligence — which is basically a legally binding certification that you have indeed made a good faith effort to contact any and all living heirs of the deceased. Qualified heir search services such as Elite Processing can handle this documentation for you in an efficient and legally sound manner. 

How do heir search services work? Any heir search organization worth its salt uses a variety of methods in order to ensure that living heirs are found and contacted. These methods include (but are certainly not limited to)

• The use of a proprietary search engine in order to find any public records or publicly accessible documents.
• A comprehensive obituary search in order to confirm that living heirs are indeed living.
• A comprehensive search of court records in order to uncover the whereabouts and legal statuses of any living heirs. 
• In-person interviews with friends and families of the heirs in the case that no other method provides adequate results. 

Do you need to hire an heir search service for any of the aforementioned reasons? Contact Elite Process Serving today and learn more about our pricing, time frames, and other important details.