Land Owner Tracing

Tracing Agent finds missing freeholder

Published 10/04/2014.

We had a great Freeholder trace in a few weeks ago that was completed this week. Read the story!

With the client's permission, we have published an account of the story.

Missing freeholder

Martin needed to undertake changes to his title deed however, there was a problem. The freeholder was missing! The address on the title deed was the same address as Martins and the only other details we had was that the title was completed in 1987, and the name SANDRA LOCK. Martin browsed the internet until he found the People Location website. He called our offices and discussed the case with one of our agents. After some consultation, Martin instructed a trace on the missing freeholder. Our agents set to work.

We knew her name, and in all likelihood, born before 1967. We knew the associated address from 1987. And we had all the documents from local registries, title details and so on.

After we study the documents we note a small clause mentioning a beneficiary, an Andrew Lock-Wilson.With a double-barrelled or hyphenated last name. Secondary trawls of UK birth index data shows only 2 matches for this name, and one was born in 1939. The other, in 1962. We soon obtain the certificate, and confirm the mother as SANDRA LOCK, maiden name Jones.JONES!!! Big sighs all round; we can’t look for birth with a name like SANDRA JONES…

So we look for ANDREW LOCK-WILSON. We soon confirm recent registration but no current data surfaces. In a short time, we confirm the death of Andrew in 2010. We again obtain the certificate and note the mother name as SANDRA WILSON, and a registered address from 2010. We run the data through our enhanced datasets and see that the property was vacated only 3 months ago. But from this information, our datasets confirm her DOB: 19-10-1941. It transpired that Sandra now had a new partner and had decided to retire in Spain.

But

She was still very friendly with the neighbours who soon passed on our message. Sandra rang us from Spain and was happy to assist with the client's freeholder enquiry.

Unusual to end up supplying offshore on this trace but it was a really interesting one..