Skip Tracing makes millionaires

Skip tracing: making it worth it.

As a skip tracing firm, (what is) we are continually tracing bad debtors or defendants. Every now and then an investigation comes along that makes what we do seem worth a lot more.

Some months ago, SWA (more)received a file asking us to locate 3 beneficiaries to an extensive estate.  The beneficiaries were previously only known to the deceased as children who had befriended the couple 35 years earlier.

The elderly lady who had died had amassed a property portfolio in excess of $10m, but the only information we were given was the children’s first names along with a last known address in Queensland, where a Christmas card had been sent in 1975.

The deceased lady had lived with her brother in a large oceanfront property on Sydney’s upper north shore. They were both independently wealthy, but neither of them ever married, and they had no other siblings or relatives.

After they had both passed away the combined assets and property portfolio was bequeathed to the 3 children they had originally befriended during a Christmas camping holiday in 1972. 

The search.

The next step involved spending 4 painstaking months researching archives dating back 40 years. The goal was to identify the families surname. The problem was that there had been several owners of the old address over the intervening 38 years. The land had been built on by three different owners.

Once we verified the family’s surname from an old archived record it was fairly straightforward. The 3 children, now fully grown with young families of their own, were made aware of the wonderful gift which they had been awarded.

Making it all worthwhile.

At SWA we get to join in many wonderful outcomes, but this case was super satisfying. It made us all realise the maxim to the story is to be nice to people  – you just never know!