Identifying

all

First Cousins

of a Man who

Died Intestate

in Ontario in 2021

 

An 'illegitimate' Birth

With no Father's Identity Discovered

 

An Estate Case

 

The facts as presented:

A man had died in Ontario in 2021. He left no Will, so he was deemed to have died Intestate. Financial officers of a local bank branch were issued with rights to administer the Estate.

The challenge:

To identify and locate all potential Estate beneficiaries.

The results:

The man had been born to an unwed mother, who had not named the child's father when she registered the birth a short time later. The woman could not be shown in any currently accessible contemporary records to have resided with any male individual before or after the birth. She did marry, almost 10 years later, but extended family members and co-workers had no knowledge of the husband at all, and no documentary traces of the husband were ever found following the marriage. The decedant was not formally adopted by the new husband. It was established that the mother and her son lived together in various locations in the province as he grew up, and he apparently remained close to his mother during his adulthood. He openly acknowledged that his father's identity was unknown.

Because no father could be identified, Provincial statutes stipulated that only relations on the mother's side could be considered as beneficiaries to the deceased man's Estate. All of the mother's siblings (9) were identified, and because all had predeceased the intestate decedant, beneficiary status devolved to children of the mother's siblings - first cousins of the decedant, who were alive at the time the man died. All first cousins (16) were identified, and vital information about them was obtained from places across Canada and in the United States. Five first cousins survived the decedant, so they were flagged as ones who would receive proceeds from the Estate. It proved impossible to discover any recent facts about three of the first cousins (one was believed to be still alive, but had had no contact with siblings for around 30 years), so the services of a Private Investigator licensed to practise in Ontario were recommended to assist in tracking their current whereabouts.

- - - - Project #220726    (Completed 16 November 2022)