Great Scott! What an awesome day! Tuesday – if we are honest – was a bit crumby. Nothing major but just a few things didn’t quite work out the way we hoped. But, what a difference a day makes! A telephone call from the aunt of an adoptee first thing this morning, wanting to make contact with her nephew …. that was a brilliant start …. and it just got better and better.
Most of the time, when our cases are accepted by the Government Legal Department (GLD), we have to chase down the assets and liabilities on the estate. There are occasions when the GLD hold the funds but this is generally for the more historic cases, not the ones we are usually involved in. So, we receive all the estate documents with the case referral form and initially, we just breathe a huge sigh of relief when the funds aren’t held by HSBC, Natwest, Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) or National Savings and Investments (NS&I). I kid you not…. one of the aforementioned groups asked for a specimen signature of the deceased the other week and others I have to have the same discussion, case after case after case, regarding who signs the release forms. I digress….
Mid-morning, I was on the telephone to RBS referring an ‘in branch payment’ made on a deceased account in November 2013, to a higher being within the firm. I was a little bewildered as to how the deceased had paid a rather random sum from his current account to his credit card some eight months after his demise. Wonders will never cease, it would seem!
I clicked ‘send/receive’ on my inbox during the call and opened a Word file attachment detailing the value of one of our recent cases. I had to check it three times to make sure I hadn’t read the figures wrong. It is the largest value single beneficiary case we have ever administered and the first claim for one of our newest Senior Researchers at FWL. Great to set the bar high on your first case….!
The day has just gone from one good news story to another and I have even managed to break down a few layers of brickwork on a challenging tracing case with very common surnames…. I think I had better keep going before the good luck runs out….!
Source image: All Things Learning
