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My wife's cousin passed away about a year ago at age 70. He was an only child, had never married, never had a partner, no children. He was found dead in his council flat in Edinburgh by council workers who entered the flat because of a water leak affecting another flat. The police were called and it turned out that he had died of natural causes about three months previously. He was a loner the only person he kept in 'fairly regular' contact with was my wife. This usually consisted of my wife contacting him to check if he was OK, sometimes he would answer the phone and sometimes not. Anyway when the police searched the flat the only name, address and phone number that was found was ours with my wife named as his emergency contact. Therefore the Edinburgh Police and Edinburgh Procurator Fiscal contacted my wife to ask her to stand as next of kin which she did as she was in fact his next of kin. We therefore arranged his funeral which we assumed we would be paying for as he was on benefits and as we found out when going through his effects at one time both broke and homeless. This was unknown to us as my company had me working abroad and he had disappeared for about 8 years and neither we nor our children had been able to find him.
Anyway i guess his experience with this set him straight and once he got into the system he lived like a hermit and saved some money in the form of paying into a Bank Account some Pension Plans and a Building Society. In fact we found out to our surprise he had more than enough to pay for his funeral and and outstand debt to the benefits for money paid after he was pronounced dead. He had deferred the pensions for some reason so they were still to pay out. We found that this amount added up to in excess of £50k. My wife therefore went through the process of being declared Executor Dative. The court have now said they want a Bond of Caution. Does this mean we need to try and find any cousins and/or children of cousins, any cousins my wife knew of have passed away that may or may not exist somewhere in the world?
We (and indecently our lawyer who does not want to follow this up) are of the opinion that would be more trouble than the estate is worth. So do we need a bond of caution and how much would this cost as I presume an insurance company would want to looking for these people whether they exist or not. Any advice much appreciated.
Anyway i guess his experience with this set him straight and once he got into the system he lived like a hermit and saved some money in the form of paying into a Bank Account some Pension Plans and a Building Society. In fact we found out to our surprise he had more than enough to pay for his funeral and and outstand debt to the benefits for money paid after he was pronounced dead. He had deferred the pensions for some reason so they were still to pay out. We found that this amount added up to in excess of £50k. My wife therefore went through the process of being declared Executor Dative. The court have now said they want a Bond of Caution. Does this mean we need to try and find any cousins and/or children of cousins, any cousins my wife knew of have passed away that may or may not exist somewhere in the world?
We (and indecently our lawyer who does not want to follow this up) are of the opinion that would be more trouble than the estate is worth. So do we need a bond of caution and how much would this cost as I presume an insurance company would want to looking for these people whether they exist or not. Any advice much appreciated.
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