Dominic Hendry talks Wills and Probate with The Genealogy Guy

Genealogy Guy and Dominic Hendry from estateresearch.co.uk discuss the intersections of genealogy and legal support services, including probate genealogists, tracing services, and DNA evidence. They emphasise the importance of understanding legal issues in genealogy and accurate inheritance planning to avoid potential disputes. Genealogy Guy highlights the growing impact of DNA evidence and online genealogy on probate law, while Dominic stresses the significance of including accurate relationships and clear instructions in a will. They also discuss the difficulties and strategies for conducting genealogy research, including accessing publicly available records and double-checking information.

Creators & Guests

Host

Genealogy Guy UK

Presenter & producer of Armchair Genealogy

Guest

Dominic Hendry

Head of Private Client at Estate Research. Dominic heads up our large Private Client team, all of whom are focused on delivering top-class genealogy services to solicitors. He has worked within the probate research and genealogy industry since 2008 and has specialised in private client genealogy for most of the last decade. Dominic is a member of the Professional Paralegal Register

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Genealogy Guy 0:17
In this episode, I thought we'd explore a slightly different angle and look at legal issues in genealogy. I'm speaking with Dominic Hendry, who is part of the estate research who specialise in tracing next of kin and missing heirs to estates. Dominic heads up the estate researchers team, and has a large group working with him within the probate research and genealogy industry, and he's been working doing that since 2008 and specialises in private client genealogy. These are all such big words. Welcome along Dominic,

Dominic Hendry 0:51
No. Thanks very much for having me delighted to be here. You know,

Genealogy Guy 0:54
What does probate mean? Because you it's bandied around all the time in genealogy, and people go probate oh, that sounds technical.

Dominic Hendry 1:01
"Grant of probate" is the document that gives people the legal, legal kind of right, if you like, once its issued, to deal with an estate. So you know, if I pass away, my wife's my executor, depending on the value of my estate, she probably has to go to a court and get a grant of probate, which is sometimes called a grant of letters of administration. But I suppose the word probate, in itself, in the way that we use it, has now become a bit of shorthand for anyone who's involved in the wills and probate, estate administration sort of area. So lawyers who you might instruct to deal with if you know your mom passes away and she's left your the family home and you need help doing the legal aspects of it, and gathering in all the assets and dealing with all the liabilities and all of that side of it, the legal side, distributing the estate. So probate, the probate world, as I think about it, tends to be shorthand for everybody who's involved in that. And as probate genealogists, we're kind of a bolt on to the legal probate industry, if you like, and trying to help them out in various different ways.

Genealogy Guy 1:59
So how did you get into genealogy? Was it, was it the legal route, then the genealogical route? Or was it, was it the other way around?

Dominic Hendry 2:09
I should be clear, no legal qualifications of standing what so ever, no legal background. Always enjoyed a bit of history. I'll be honest. I grew up in 1980s-1990s Liverpool. I don't think I'd heard the word genealogy at that point, I don't think I really knew what it was. I always liked history more generally. And I suppose family history, genealogy, there's always that kind of link there. But no, you know, there's a sort of cliche about every great man, there's a much better woman behind him, which is probably a bit old fashioned now, but in my case, every small scouce man, there's a much, much better woman behind me. And no, we were. It was funny, really, we were moving to London from Liverpool, where we're both from originally, and I'd seen a job online in genealogy for one of the big, sort of three or four firms. I thought, oh my god, that just sounds like somebody wrote me a job that just sounds fabulous. I'd never really heard about it. We had a lot of people who've already done a bit of genealogy, probably people like yourself. People like yourself and your listeners who are quite enthusiastic about it already. I will hold my hand up. I wasn't, I didn't really know anything about it, you know, I don't think when I grew up, anyone in my area grew up wanting to be a genealogist or anything like that, a probate researcher. So I seen this job advert online, and I clicked off it straight away and said, No, I'm not applying for that. I've got no experience, nothing, no background in that whatsoever. And then just by chance, in the way these things sometimes can be a bit serendipitous. My wife happened to work around the corner from this company that had placed that Ad that I'd seen and ignored online, and she saw the ad in the recruitment office around the corner, and she rang me on her dinner and said, I found you the perfect job. When she got back that night, I said, No, I'm not going to apply for that. I saw it. I've got no experience, and she slapped me over the head and said, Don't be silly. Metaphorically, slapped me over the head, just to be clear. So don't be silly. What have you got to lose? Apply for it. And I think I started a week later. Was in about 2008 I think now, just before the credit crunch, and Lehman Brothers and all of that. For any of your older listeners who remember such things,

Genealogy Guy 4:03
How about an intro to genealogy for solicitors and testators? Well, how do the how does this link with lawyers and genealogy?

Speaker 1 4:11
No it's perfectly reasonable question. And for a long time, I sort of worked off, you know, I'm sure a lot of your listeners will be aware of the Bono vacante or the unclaimed estates list. And when I came into the industry, that was kind of the big thing. And what you would do is they would advertise the unclaimed estates list on a Wednesday night, Thursday morning in the newspapers. When I was when I was first starting, someone would go to whatever the earliest shop in London was that opened that sold newspapers and get the list. And it would all of the genealogy companies would work off that list and try and find next of kin that the government legal department, as it is now, would be advertising for. At some point, in with my former employer, they asked me to go into the private client department and the probate department. And I probably a bit like your first question there, Mell, I was probably thinking, what's probate at that point, to some extent. And and I got into it so that where I think would have been two or three years after I came into the industry. I just got to learn what it was really, I'm really, it's a legal support service. And there's lots of reasons lawyers might need us. The classic ones are, you know, I've got a will from 1981 it's 30, 40, years later, shockingly enough, that when you think of the 80s as being 40 years ago. And some of the people, there's no addresses in the will, or might be that there is an address and they're not responding to letters, and can you trace them? So we have that kind of people Tracing Service, if you like. And then the other thing is, obviously you get clients solicitors who work often in court protection teams, so they're doing things, who people who lack capacity. So you know, if you, if you develop dementia and you've got no family, then your local authority or a solicitor can be appointed your financial or guardianship deputy. And then eventually those clients pass away. And if the solicitor, by that point has not found any family and there is no will, then it becomes almost like one of those, those government jobs where you trace the family, and you do that. My company has had a big focus. I've been here nine years now. I think my company's had a big focus on how we eliminate risk for solicitors and for their clients, the personal representatives, the executors. There's number of different ways we do that. We help with things like insurance policies that can protect an estate in case anybody comes forward after the estate has been distributed and says, hang on, these cousins all got the money, but I was the illegitimate son of the deceased, and nobody knew about me. And actually I should have got this 1 million pounds, not all of these cousins, and they can actually try and claim that money back from the personal representative, so from the beneficiaries for a number of years after distribution. So we help by kind of doing some checks to make sure everyone is identified, we offer what we call our free risk assessment, where we go through the family trace. The solicitor tells us who they believe the beneficiaries are that they've been told about. We check it against all those things that your listeners will all know about, the Birth, Marriage and Death indices, the 1939 registers of the NHS and census records if the families go back that far. And we do a kind of quick free check to say, look, is it likely that you've got enough information here that you can distribute this estate or this part of the estate in confidence, knowing that nothing's going to come back to bite your clients post distribution. And we do that for a number of reasons. One is, obviously, we're a commercial company. We're in it for the money to some extent, you know? And if we do these free checks some of the time, we will find half the family trees being missed. You know, that happens several times a week, and at that point we can then say to the solicitor, right? We now know you've missing half the family tree. Here's a quote from us to find everybody. So that's how we make our money. But actually, what we're really passionate about, and I probably sounds makes me sound really cliche, but it is true. Is more to do with making sure that if solicitors are doing this process right, then they've eliminated any risk for their clients. So if anyone does come forward after the money's been given out to all the family, and who should have got it, you know, who was closer kin, then everybody's covered, because everybody, at every step did the right stage. So we do a kind of training presentation risk in estate administration. And we go, I go around the country, and some of my my sales team go around the country, and we deliver this presentation in house for private client teams. So that's the lawyers who are doing dealing with probate and sometimes for Court of Protection lawyers as well.

Genealogy Guy 8:17
So is that taking us on to preparing your will from a genealogist view of preparing your will. How would that sort of work? What sort of things should they be considering?

Dominic Hendry 8:27
Do do sessions as well with will writers in particular, and in a way, I'd love to do one with members of the public, I think, as a sort of side hustle, or a side service, or whatever you would call it, because there are things you pick up a you know, you can go to a lawyer, and they'll tell you all of the things you need to consider in terms of your tax planning, in terms of the technicalities of the law, but there are really basic things that you pick up in my job, not mistakes, per se necessarily, but just things that come up really regularly in wills that you think, God, if, if someone would have told the testator when they were in front of them, how? Why don't you think about this? It would have made everything a bit easier once the testators passed away. And there's lots of examples of that, really, but, but just to give you a couple of them, I give an example a case we had, I think it was last week. There was three people in a will, and they were simply named. I'll change the names for confidentiality reasons, obviously, but let's call them the Smith family. I'll make up the most common surname I can think of. With apologies to any of your listeners who are Smiths, you know, you've got John Smith, Paul Smith, Joan Smith, and we kind of that was always in the world, like, you know, I want to give 5000 pounds to each of these three people, and they were just named first name, surname. So we start looking at it, you know, we thought, well, maybe they're members of family, you know, we start looking at electoral roles to see maybe their neighbors of the deceased, they may not be, of course, they could just be someone they've met at the golf club once. You know, it's very, very difficult. But we'll start with the family tree, and we'll start with things that we can access, like electoral registers, to seek and we find anyone. And therefore, quite often, you go, Oh, hang on, there you go. There was a John Smith who lived next door with his wife. My wife, Joan Smith, and their son, Derek Smith, and those names matches the names that are in the will. So that's probably them. And one of the things I always say to will writers is a couple of extra words can make such a big difference to saving the estate money and to making it much more likely that the people that you wanted to give money to in your will, you wanted to remember in your will, which is a lovely thing to do. Obviously, you know, we want to make sure everyone in your will is found, because that was your wishes. That was what you wanted before you passed away. Not that again, something we're really passionate about. We want to make sure everybody the deceased wanted to remember in the will is accounted for. And the example I give to will writers is in that will there, if you would have said to my next door neighbors, it would have saved an awful lot of time and therefore money for the estate, because we wouldn't have needed to do the family tree elements. We wouldn't have needed, you know, we would have just concentrated on the addresses. So one of the things I'm always saying is have a look at your will, and just have a look. Have you put relationships in there when you've named anyone you know, if you're giving a gift, you'd be amazed how much a couple of extra words in a will, you know, to my to my cousin, to my my goddaughter, to my neighbor. These things can really help people like me out. And what that actually does is it means the value of your estate is likely to not be reduced as much, because the the less information in the world when it comes to someone like estate research, tracing those people. A/, it's more likely, if there's more information, we'll be successful and locate them. And B/, it'll be cheaper, because we'll spend fewer hours doing the research, because we had somewhere to start. You know, if it says my cousin, then I know I just got to start with the family tree. I don't need to look at other records. So that's one of the sort of big ones I'm always, always trying to push on people and will writers and probate lawyers who do will writing are very keen on keeping wills to as few words as necessary. I think there's lots of reasons for that. They just don't want to clog the wills up with too many words. But just here and there a couple of extra words. You know, we're not talking about adding 16 pages to your will document, a couple of extra words saying who these people are in relation to you, whether that's familial relationships or whether that's your friends or neighbors, it can really help out, because what you don't want is that the value of your estate starts to go down and down so your beneficiaries get less money because they're spending it on on people like me. I want the opposite. Of course. I want the will to be as vague as possible, and we can charge as much as possible. But you know, as I say, we try and give everyone the best and most honest advice, even if it's maybe not always in our commercial interests. And so that's one of the things we point out. And then the other big one, to be honest with you, and I'm always saying it to my family, to my friends, is just think about things you don't want to think about in your will. Think about backups upon backups upon backups. And what I mean by that is me and my wife were doing our will two years ago, and my wife was saying to me, she's not involved in the probate world in any way whatsoever. And she was saying to me, it was quite straightforward, isn't it? You know, if you survive me, you get everything. And if you don't survive anything, it goes to our two daughters. And I had to say to my wife, and it's not one of those things any of us want to think about, is it? I'd say, Well, what if we're all on a plane together and it goes down, or alternatively? What if we're in a car accident together and we see this month after month, and, you know, I've seen this month after month for at least 12 years, where people just didn't think about, well, yeah, I wanted to go to my wife and then to my children, but what if they all pre deceased me? And look, I think one of the reasons the majority people still don't make a will at all, is that people don't want to face their own mortality. They definitely don't want to think about, what if my spouse or my nearest and dearest die before me? And for that reason, that a lot of wills that we see failing are because people haven't really just had that honest thought, or maybe they've not been advised by the will writer, really think about, do you not want to back up? I think in Scotland, they call it failing which or failing whom clauses, where you say, Well, I wanted to go to my wife, failing whom to my daughters, failing whom to these lists of charities, because failed wills are always devastating. Is too hard a word for this, but they're really, you know, we don't like seeing them again. It's all about we want to honor that person's wishes. This person's passed away, and the last thing they're ever going to do is leave these gifts in their wills, in theory. And we want to make sure the wills are upheld. And we want to make sure everybody that they wanted, or whether it's an organisation or people you know, are found, found at a reasonable cost if needs be. And these wills don't fail because we see failed will after failed will after failed will. And then the only other thing I'd say, not to labor the point too much, Mell and bore your listeners to tears, is, I think one thing people don't think enough about is class gifts in wills. Now I don't know if your listeners all kind of know what I mean by class gifts. So just to explain, a lot of people in their will will leave part or a whole of their estate to a class of beneficiaries instead of to individually named beneficiaries. So again, just to use my own family, I was talking to my mother not too long ago, and she wanted to leave a percentage of her estate in her will to her grandchildren, and I think name her. Four grandchildren. But I was saying, but actually, you know, I probably still have an age where I could potentially have more children, Please, God, I won't at this point in my life, but, and you know, my younger sister certainly could have more children. So I say, you know, you'd be far better saying I would like a percentage of my state to go to any grandchildren of mine. So that would be a class gift. You're naming them as a class of beneficiary, not as individuals. And these are really, really common, you know, Goodwill writers, good lawyers will always advise people, if they are particularly it's often grandkids, you know, because you've often got a test data in front of you is maybe a little bit older in life, because they're starting to think about their estate, and they're saying, Well, you know, I've got grandchildren. And so they often do name them as that class. And there are some problems with it, not problems, per se, but there are. There is some additional risk that comes with it to your executors. There's some additional cost that comes with a class gift to your executors when you pass away. And that is in the same way that I talked about earlier, when you you know you've got an intestate estate under a class gift, if it is to a familial class. So such of my grandchildren is the really common one. A genealogist is going to need to look at that and make sure all of your grandchildren are identified and because what if you pass away and your one grandson who's less trustworthy than all the rest turns up at the solicitor's office and says, Yeah, this class give gives a million pounds to to right away, to Nan's grandchildren, and I'm her only grandson. This happens. We see this again month after month. Solicitors. Just ask the family commonly, what you find, I think, is two problems. One is they don't mention the black sheep of the family. You know, eight of them come forward, and they just don't mention, well, we never like John anyway, so let's not mention him. He's a bit of a wrong un and or you get the other thing, which is really more and more common now, because of the way society works, is people don't know dad was married before he married their mom. You know, Dad's left a will to his and part of his estate is a class gift to such of his grandchildren. And they go into the solictors and say, well, here's a list of my children who are the grandchildren actually don't know dad was married and had three children from his first marriage. Now, a good will writer, good lawyer, will have drilled down into that with the testator when they were in front, in front of them, and then maybe said, Well, look, if you don't want to remember that your family from your first marriage, there are ways around that. Don't do it as a class gift, name them or, you know, just say the descendants from this particular marriage. There are ways around that. But those conversations don't always happen with testators. I don't think testators really think about what happens when they put these kind of class gifts in the will, and it can lead to problems. I mean, I'll give you another example. We were working with a firm of solicitors who had one of these class gifts. They spoke to the executor who gave them. It was actually this one was nephews and nieces, I think, from memory. And you know, they said each of my nephews and nieces to get a percentage of the residue of my estate. I think it was a reasonably large estate, maybe sort of half million pound net, so large to me, anyway. And again, typical thing we see nobody mentioned that there was a nephew. They did get a different firm, Office of genealogists to look at it, who did a thorough and very good job, I have to say, even though it wasn't my firm. And they said, look, we've looked at all the records for England and Wales, where this family are based. These are the nephews and nieces that we've located. Fast forward, six months later, a nephew has come forward out of the woodwork and said that I was born in Azerbaijan, if an apologies if I'm butchering the pronunciation of that country there, and I'm a nephew. And actually, now we've seen the evidence. It does look as if he is now I know genealogist would have necessarily located him unless somebody in the family would have said, Oh, you do know there was a branch of the family in Azerbaijan, don't you? So you need to look at the records over there. Because typically what you do when you're looking into a family tree is you look in the areas where you know the family have been. So if a family have always been based in Cheshire England, you're going to look in Cheshire England. And the slight issue there was There are insurance policies to protect this exact scenario, which I think I touched on a little earlier, but it doesn't appear as if that particular lawyer had recommended one of these insurance policies, or at least they hadn't documented it to the executors, and now that lawyer is facing a claim. If this chap is right, and if the family don't repay the money, it's potentially going to be the lawyers who have to pay it. Now, all lawyers have their own professional indemnity insurance, so they will be covered. But what happens, as you know, as any of your listeners know, you claim on your car insurance, what happens next year to your premiums during a cost of living crisis? They shoot through the roof. And so these, these are the kind of things we go through with will writers. And I think it's, I thought I'd mention it today, because it might be of interest to any of your listeners who are looking at their own wills or in that kind of will writing world,

Genealogy Guy 19:24
Let's have a short break listening to Dominic Hendry talking about wills and probate, and which will give me a chance to mention the armchair genealogy podcast is now also found on Audible platform, along with Spotify, as well as the usual podcast directories. You can also still hear us on your smart speakers. Just say the wake word and say "play armchair genealogy podcast" and a reminder, you can find us on Facebook, under @armchair genealogy and LinkedIn, also @armchair genealogy

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Genealogy Guy 20:05
Let's now return to Dominique Hendry from estateresearch.co.uk, who's given us plenty of advice and food for thought regarding making a good will and making sure it has plenty of clarity because of things like DNA now and people can simply put their DNA through, and suddenly they are a distant relation to somebody. What sort of impact is that having on the legal section? Because you can have somebody that doesn't appear on any paperwork, and suddenly he is the son or the daughter, and there's no doubt in it, because the DNA says it,

Dominic Hendry 20:41
Yeah, do you know what? Mell, it's a really, really good question. I'd like to pay you to come to the audience for all my presentations to solicitors and ask that exact question if I could, because it's one that I don't think people are appreciating enough. It's not just the DNA evidence. People are now starting to link themselves through things like ancestry.com that your listeners will know, I'm sure find my past, past or other suppliers are available, if I'm doing my BBC presenter bit there, and it's becoming a problem, because you can upload your DNA on one of these things, and then suddenly you've got cousins you didn't know about. And it can, it can link you in that way. And so the risk of people coming forward after an estate being distributed has never been greater, because you've got the chance. Now, you know people can trace each other through social media. That's another aspect of this as well. Suddenly, this cousin You didn't know about in America getting contact on Facebook, or whatever it is these days, and or someone uploads their DNA onto onto one of these ancestry.com sites, and there was a serial killer in California in America. who I won't name, dreadful human being, committed a lot of really bad crimes in, I think, 1980s California. He was never found, and then he stopped committing crimes, so they thought he'd passed away. And it became a sort of cold case. I think the stereotypical thing is, you know, these sorts of criminals often carry on being criminals until they die, or they caught and they hadn't caught him, and he stopped, so they thought he probably passed away anyway. Fast forward to, I think, three or four years ago. Now, as it turned out, two of the killer's cousins uploaded their DNA onto something that was publicly available, and the FBI, or whoever it was, the investigating body in America worked out from their DNA that the serial killer had to be a cousin of these two sisters, and they caught him, and he was wheeled into court, I think, in his late 80s or early 90s, you know, I think near enough death's door, but he only got caught and they would never, ever have found this chap. I saw a documentary on this, which is why I bring it up, because I think about it anytime anyone asks the question that you just asked. Now, more and more people are just finding each other online through these DNA maps or being found online. And so it had a it should have had a huge impact on the legal industry, because probate lawyers need to be more or anyone who's dealing with an estate as an executor, you know, or an administrator, if it's an intestate estate, or a classic, if they will, needs to be aware that the risk has gone up because of what you just said. And so I think, in a way, it's never been more important that the family tree is checked. But we wouldn't find everyone as you know, we through the documents, through DNA, because we're not going to do that standard. What you really need is to put an insurance policy in place. Just want to be clear here as well, we obviously make money doing genealogy. We don't make any money on insurance. I often sound like an insurance salesman. I have to promise people, I'm absolutely not. We use insurance as a tool for our clients. We when we do our genealogy report, we put a quote for an insurance policy, but we don't get paid for that. We don't get any kickbacks for that. We only use it as a tool, because you never know that a nephew in Azerbaijan or a cousin who's found through one of these DNA maps isn't going to come forward within a few years of distribution, and suddenly, the personal representatives, the lawyers and the beneficiaries could all be facing having to repay some money here. So, yeah, it's a really, really good question that one.

Genealogy Guy 24:05
When you've got an interesting case and you're delving into it, where are some of the go to places, you instantly just go, right? I'll start there, because that's the logical place to go, that's free, that's somewhere that would get the ball rolling without having to think, I've got to log into this one. I've got to use this. I've got to go there.

Dominic Hendry 24:23
It's a good question, and probably want to, have to be careful in answering a little bit, I suppose, because obviously tricks of the trade and all of the rest of it, Secrets of the industry. But obviously, look, most of what we do is just exploiting publicly available records. I mean, we're very, very lucky in this country, really, really lucky, and you don't really maybe appreciate it, so you do international genealogy, is that our records are really comprehensive and they're really open now, obviously, I'm sure you and your listeners will know there's controversy around that. You know, I think famously, there's, there's a mother of a sort of stillborn child whose child's identity was taken by somebody, they got their child's birth certificate, and then went on to do whatever they did with that, by taking the child. And that was very upsetting for the mother, obviously, and so she's always kind of talked about records actually should be, you know, much less available, as is the case in an awful lot of countries around the world. But in this country, we have very good, you know, anyone who can go to the local library where they've got any of these records can do a lot of what we do. You know, we're not inventing the wheel or reinventing the wheel here. You know, it is just the things that all of your listeners would be doing. It'd be Birth, Marriage and Death indices. It would be your census records, I think the 1939 NHS register, which I mentioned before. And then it would be things like electoral roles. We are also licensed to gain access to certain extra information. You know, when you go online and you tick some of those boxes, can we share your details with carefully selected third party bodies? You know, we're licensed by other providers to do what we call positive tracing, and that really means tracing beneficiaries, which is to say, Mell, if I traced you, it's seen as to your benefit that I've traced you. So we don't do anything negative. We're not going to rock up looking for you with as a debt collector or anything like that, or anything negative. It's what, what they call positive tracing. So it's exploiting all those things. We have lots of our own in house records that we use. We can, from time to time, use online records. You know, I've already named, I think, two of the online subscription type companies. There is problems with those not in that the subscription companies aren't great. They are. I know people who work in all of them, and they're fabulous people, but you know, there, there. There were already issues with things like the birth marriage and deaths indices. There were already mistakes. There were already omissions. I'm sure you and all your listeners know that if you've done anything yourself, but then, since they've then been taken and digitalised, some of those errors have been compounded. So there were already errors in the original version, and then some a human, at some point, has typed it into a computer, and it is now digital and some of the humans who typed it into the computer may have made errors. So suddenly there were errors there, anyway, and there are now more errors. So you have to be very, very careful with online services. I will also say as well, because I'm sure some of your listeners do look at, you know, just use it as an example. Again, the ancestry.com family trees. People often now upload their trees on there. So there's quite a lot of information. You know, occasionally we look at stuff like that. What I would say is that the amount of those that we look at that when we then start really properly documenting a family tree, by which I mean ordering the birth rights and death certificates, the wills, interviewing the family members, you start to see a lot of those family trees have have so many errors, not really so much because anything's done, anything you wouldn't do yourself, but it's because they've looked at records. Well, that name seems to match and he's about the right age in the right area. So I think he's that cousin. But actually, when you order the marriage certiciate or birth certifcate it's a completely different guy with a similar name in the same area, you, I'm sure all your listeners have done this themselves when they've ordered these certificates.

Genealogy Guy 27:52
The other classy thing is them is when he was talking about the transcription, when they actually transcribe the images and and I'm always saying to people, make sure you've actually looked at the original image. Don't just look at the transcription, because you look at it and you go, yeah, all the information looks fine, and you realise, actually they've spelt the city. It's completely wrong. It's the wrong end of the country. And you're following going, how did this person move from Edinburgh down to Skunthorpe or and suddenly appear in Cornwall the next day. So it is an important thing, as you pointed out, to make sure you double check and get the original document and see if it cross references to other documents.

Dominic Hendry 28:32
I have a bit of a confession here, though, Mell, and it's a bit of a strange one when I when I was at university in one summer, I was hired by a data entry company, and they had us typing in images that come up of individual letters. And it was a it was, it was a very robotic job. I only did it for about three or four weeks, I think off the top of my head, one summer, and you would get letters up, and you would just have to type in what letter you thought it said, and you put it in. Now, I have to say, years after that job, which I'd almost completely forgotten about, when I started doing genealogy and doing exactly what you just said there, and looking at the original images, those letters look almost identical to the ones that we were inputting. So while we were never actually told what the data was, I have a suspicion that I might have been one of the people that have inputted these incorrectly. So I might be partially I don't know for sure, but if your readers do get problems, they can think of me and blame me, because I may have been a part of the problem there. But no, you are absolutely spot on. You have to look at it. The problem, of course, with that, is that part of what you do now when you use those online services, which is why we're very cautious about using them often it is, you know, you'll do a search and the right answer won't come up because they've got it written down as a different spelling. You know, you've put in Clark and it's been misspelled as Clark with an E, or, you know, whatever. And obviously, those, those problems already existed before the digital element, because. Down the years, people whatever the registrar spelt your sense as, especially if you didn't read and write. If we're talking about families, you know, back in the 1800s or early 1900s you already had things like clerks being spelled different ways down the generation. So it was already a problem. Now you've got the added problem of extra Mistakes were made when those records were typed in by 18 year old, people like me possibly

Genealogy Guy 30:21
Well, the way it's digitised now, what makes it a lot easier is many of the search boxes allow you to do in the search to put in wildcard. As you say, in the old days, you had to pick a name and and stick with that name, and then go back to the beginning and start again with the different spelling. And it would sometimes take you, like, weeks to find the right name, especially when people were writing things down, and they wrote what they heard, and then, yeah, the other person couldn't check it because they couldn't read. So they go, yeah, that's right.

Dominic Hendry 30:50
Yeah. I mean, it's funny. We get it with lawyers a lot where we'll do a report and they'll say, Well, hang on, how can you be certain that John Clark, C L, E R K is the same as John Clarke, C, l, A, R, K,, you know. And you have to kind of explain that this was a really common thing that happened, you know. And as long as everything else matches, and you produced all your other evidence, which is part of what we do, that maybe goes a little bit beyond what what perhaps amateurs might do, then you can still often distribute these things in confidence. But again, it adds a layer of doubt. Because can you ever be 100% sure that this chap is born under one name and dies under a different name was the same, the same chap? And especially when you are Tony Clark's a really good example, because of how popular a surname is, you know, and Smith's, Smythes, you get as well, and all these, all these other things, you know? So, yeah, it's a, it's a real problem. And it's, again, it kind of comes back to what I was saying earlier about why we really push probate lawyers to make sure they get a professional to check it, and they consider, even if they don't put it in place, that they consider putting in an insurance policy in front of their client. Because all of these things can mean, no matter how good a genealogist you are, and I like to think we're very good. I'm sure all your listeners do too. You can just go down the wrong line. You can miss something, you can give something. It can be an error and omission. Whenever we produce a report, it is always, there's always a caveat that said, this could have errors and emissions and for this reason for and we often give lots of examples of what that could be and why that could be, I think you and all your listeners would be aware of anyway, and that's why we do push the insurance. And this is back to me, sounding like an insurance sounding like an insurance salesman once again.

Genealogy Guy 32:24
My final question is, your own family tree. Have you? Have you done it? And how far have you managed to get back yourself?

Dominic Hendry 32:30
Your listeners will be shocked to hear that. As someone from born and bred in Liverpool, I have Scottish and Irish heritage, so it's not quite as easy, you know what? When people can go back 15 generations in the records for England and Wales and trace myself back to the beginning of registration, or what have you. So I've done bits of it. I've done quite a lot of the Scotland. So I go to Scotland. About a third of my company's work comes from Scotland, I think. And we love going up the Scottish records are great. They're not necessarily as readily available as they are in England and Wales, you have to actually go to access the full records for Scotland. You have to go to one of the record offices up there. So it's a lovely excuse to go to lovely Scotland for me. So my father's side of the family, who hailed from an estate called the Gorbals estate in Glasgow. I don't know how many Glaswegian listeners you have, but they'll all know the Gorbals estate. It was, historically, a very, very working class estate, you know, big high rise tenement sort of things. And I think they were all Dockers, so they moved from Glasgow to Liverpool, but when the docks in Liverpool were a big thing. So I've gone back quite far there. And actually, I've got family in America who are really, really interested in genealogy. I always, often do find Americans have a real passion for it interesting. Maybe, maybe it's just my family and friends over there, and actually my dad's cousin. I should know this, shouldn't I? As a genius my dad's cousin, she actually came over between to England visited us recently she'd done even more. You know, she'd really drilled down into the detail. But it's funny actually, because one of the things when you are a professional genealogy genealogist is, do you want to spend your weekend doing a busman's holiday? You know, if you're a painter and decorator, all your family are going to ask you if you want to spend Saturdays for free painting and decorating their house. And a lot of a lot of my family and even some friends have kind of, oh, you know, you can just have a bit of a look into mine of a weekend, can't you? And so I, I've been in industry in 16, 15, 16, years now, I've slowly built more and more on my own family tree, but there are lots of things, lots of interesting things. You know, I had a grandfather who'd served in the Second World War that I'd not known about. I think he'd actually maybe gone down on a boat and that had been sunk, but survived. He'd been one of the few survivors that was sort of lovely to see. You know, especially we've been thinking about this recently, haven't we a D Day 80 year celebrations recently, at the time of recording, anyway, and so, so that was quite nice to see the but also, one of the things I often say to my friends and even to some beneficiaries is, do you really want us to look at your tree, because we might find some stuff out you're not so sure about. You know, do you really want to know. And my mother is from a staunchly Catholic family, I think, hailed originally from Ireland, still haven't been able to get over to Ireland yet and do a lot of thier side of it. But just as an example, I know there was a member of that family who was, you know, really kind of very religious and pious. And, you know, had a number of daughters, but the first one was born out of wedlock. And members of my family were really surprised, because they had this idea of this sort of really pious woman who never would have done anything wrong in her life, and not that there's anything wrong with that.But at the time and the way society was, then it was, you know, seen in a certain way. But then family members said, Oh no, now we thought about it, that particular Aunt was treated differently to the rest of the family, which is tragic, isn't it, but it's the way society used to be about illegitimacy and stuff like that.

Genealogy Guy 35:50
It's always the unsaid things that people go, yeah, I remember there was an Auntie that everybody always like, pulled a face. And it's only when you do genealogy you realise, oh, now I know why they used to pull that face.

Dominic Hendry 36:02
Yeah, so, but it's funny, isn't that? I mean, now nobody would bat an eye lid, and yet, you know, I've had, you know, I had a guy in his 80's on the phone to me years ago now in tears, and because he'd been completely rejected by the rest of the family for being born out of wedlock, it wasn't his fault he was born out of wedlock, even if you thought children being born children out of wedlock was a bad thing. It wasn't his fault. He didn't do anything wrong, you know, other than be born from that relationship and but it was funny, you know, it had affected this, this guy, I think, was in his 80s, and it had affected his whole life, the fact that he was born, I mean, even out of wedlock, now, sounds old fashioned and majoritive doesn't it, you know, but it affected this guy's whole life. So he suddenly got this family tree of people he'd never known about, and was able to reestablish contract contact. And, you know, I think it had, to some extent, really touched him. So you do get nice things in our job like that, you know,

Genealogy Guy 36:52
My thanks there to Dominique Hendry from estateresearch.co.uk, for a fascinating and detailed insight into wills and probate, he has certainly given me plenty to think about when researching into wills or even making sure my own wishes are very clear and will stand the test of time until the next episode. Happy and productive researching

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