Legal order of succession comes into force whenever the order of succession has not been clarified by a last will and testament.

If no heir is found after the public notification of a death, the so-called default of heirs comes into effect after a certain period of time defined by the relevant court. This means that the legacy passes to the State.

However, very often legitimate heirs do not know about their rights due to events such as war, displacement, emigration, national separation, etc. In such cases, heir searches are very complicated as well as time-consuming and expensive.

Thanks to our worldwide network of genealogical offices, our highly specialised staff, our extensive in-house archive and the use of cutting-edge genealogical software programmes, we are able to quickly, effectively and smoothly identify legitimate heirs in almost 80 per cent of cases. Subsequently, our specialist attorneys legally assert the entitlement of those heirs to the legacy in question.

We generally work on behalf of notary publics, inheritance trustees, curators of estates, Australian State Trustee attorneys (as we are their preferred genealogical office for German-speaking countries), communities of heirs and genealogical offices from all over the world, or further to public incitement.