A man is ‘floating on heir’ after a BBC show led to him landing a £200,000 windfall from a distant relative he’d never met or even heard of.
John Hall’s good luck demonstrates how countless people miss out on money or even houses they could have inherited from long-lost relatives.
He only found he was due a slice of his cousin Shirley Street’s £1million-plus estate after the case was investigated by Finders International for an episode of BBC Two’s Heir Hunters.
BBC show led to John Hall to land a £200,000 windfall from a distant relative he’d never met or even heard of
John, a pensioner from Solihull, had never heard Shirley and knew nothing at all about her side of the family.
‘The day that Finders International contacted me was a complete surprise’ he admitted.
‘Everything that I know about Shirley Street has come from them.’
Shirley Diane Street, a widow, died in September 2015 at a nursing home in Folkestone, Kent, and left no will.
Her husband Patrick died in 1994, and she lived in Folkestone for 23 years after retiring from work in London.
The couple had no children, and Shirley was also an only child, meaning the BBC sleuths had to delve even deeper into the family history to find any next of kin.
John is set to pocket £200,000 out of the blue after sharing the inheritance with 10 other relatives
They discovered Shirley had seven aunts and uncles on her mother’s side.
They traced one cousin, Sidney Wintersgill, who was an RAF co-pilot in a Wellington bomber during World War Two.
But Sidney died in action during the war and never married nor had children.
The team then discovered that Shirley’s father had a sister named Marion.
Her grandchild John Hall – a first cousin once removed – is an heir to the estate.
Now he’s set to pocket £200,000 out of the blue after sharing the inheritance with 10 other relatives.
‘This whole experience has been quite bizarre’ he confessed.
‘To think that I could be inheriting some money from someone I didn’t even know existed.’
Daniel Curran of Finders International said ‘This case had a challenging start when we discovered there were no siblings or children of the deceased.
‘We are very pleased we found John, and ten further heirs on Shirley’s mother’s side.’