We are currently administrating an estate in the name of Fortune …. cue hilarious jokes. Sadly, it is far from a fortune in monetary terms and has many and various beneficiaries the world over. Regular readers will remember that last week we had a gentleman who left his photocopied identification with a member of staff in a neighbouring office. I was mildly bemused when I checked our Fortune family tree as this chap did not appear in our research at all. Odd ….
So, I went back to square one and began the research from this Mr Fortune and his birth certificate. He had an older sister and I swiftly nailed down the name of his mother and father, along with their marriage quarter and registration district. His father was born in 1905 and for the life of me, I could not fathom how we had missed him when we had our deceased Mr Fortune’s father on the 1911 census with his family. Well, that is because the Mr Fortune who left his ID next-door has NOTHING to do with the deceased Mr Fortune! You may well therefore ask why he appeared in Calne from a town about 40 minutes drive away thinking that he was entitled to inherit. Well, very simply, because he had been told that he was entitled by another firm!
They had written to him in August stating that they understood “that the above case has been removed from the Treasury website which means that a competitor firm has probably signed up another entitled beneficiary. You should still be an entitled beneficiary and receive a share in the estate, but as the case has been awarded to a competitor firm, we are unable to pursue the case further on your behalf”. I have not heard anything so bonkers in a long time!! Of course, they can still pursue the case…. unless they had then realised that their case was incorrectly constructed. In which case, why were they not just honest with Mr Fortune??
This is only the second time we have dealt with this firm and, on the other case we were administrating, they broke their contract with their client as well! Clearly, these two dealings have not given us great confidence in their work. Nice website – lots of ‘staff’ but not convinced of their accuracy on case work, honesty with clients or ability to see cases through. One to avoid….
