We know that our profession is relatively unknown. We also know that you have to take away the heirs’ skepticism before telling them exactly what it’s about.
In the present case, which we were offered from the USA via a Hungarian partner office, the deceased, a niece of the deceased in the USA, had already been tracked down by our Hungarian partner after long research in various archives in Poland in Haifa/Israel, but did not respond to the letters from our correspondence office.
We were therefore asked – not least because of our permanent Jewish employee on site – to make contact with the heiress, which we initially did not succeed in doing because the lady did not respond to our employee’s calls in that she simply did not answer.
Eventually, however, our genealogist succeeded in learning the name of a daughter of the heiress who lives in Tel Aviv and he contacted her by telephone. She confirmed that her mother was simply no longer able to operate the telephone, but asked boldly about our request.
After our employee briefly explained our activity profile to the lady and said that her mother might be entitled to a larger estate sum, she reacted extremely skeptically and demanded all information about the inheritance case, which we did not want to tell her on the telephone. She then called our office in Vienna at short notice and demanded unequivocally that the managing director appear personally in Tel Aviv the next day, otherwise she would block any further contact attempts from our side.
2 hours later, the most important things of our managing director and another genealogist were packed and our team traveled from Vienna via Zurich (the direct flight from Vienna to Tel Aviv was already booked out) 5 hours after the telephone call to Israel. Once there, our permanent correspondent received us and brought us to the agreed meeting point in a large downtown hotel, where the daughter and son of the heiress were already waiting for our employees. Also present were 2 lawyers and the respective spouses of the children of the deceased.
After a five-hour meeting, where skepticism prevailed, we agreed that the children of the heiress would sleep on the whole matter again and let us know tomorrow.
However, since the next day was a Saturday (Sabbath) and therefore no work could be done, we had to wait until sunset until further contact was possible.
In contrast to the somewhat more open-minded son of the heiress, the daughter told us that after consultation with her husband coming from the USA, she had no interest in continuing the talks and we then contacted the son, whom we asked for a new conversation.
Unfortunately, however, he lived 150 kilometers outside of Tel Aviv and it was extremely difficult to get a taxi to his hometown on this holiday, which we eventually succeeded in doing and we were able to visit the son again through the Gaza Strip.
At a dinner, which his lawyer also attended, we were able to convince the son of the heiress of the matter and it then took about 5 hours until the fee agreement was accepted by both sides.
The brother then contacted his sister, who after long hesitation finally agreed, so that we personally handed her the contract on our return trip to Tel Aviv with the request to hand it over to the mother.
The next day, our originally planned departure day, we received the agreement back signed and our Viennese employees flew back to Vienna one day later.
The heiress receives almost $700,000 in this case.
