Missing Heirs: Tactics The Professionals Use

When the average person thinks about missing heirs, they usually think of dollar bills inside old pairs of pants or quarters they left by the coffee maker for some reason. But missing inheritances aren't just limited to the Paris Hiltons of the world. Government agencies are holding millions of dollars in hidden, unclaimed money for people across the country, across every income bracket. It's no surprise that articles on unclaimed funds are regularly printed in Forbes, the New York Times, and seemingly every local news station around the country.

Some people are out to find this missing money for themselves. Other enterprising people look to find money that belongs to others and point them to it in exchange for a finder's fee. Still others are legal professionals looking to contact an heir for their state's probate system. Either way, locating missing heirs requires many of the same skills needed to find a missing person, with one crucial difference - all the heirs want to be found.

But locating a missing heir before their inheritance is seized by the government is a difficult task. Most governments have set time frames for locating an heir before an inheritance becomes government property. The state of California, for example, has a shocking 7.2 billion dollars in unclaimed money in its coffers, and only 20% of it ever gets claimed by the legal owners!

Tracking Unknown Heirs

Another difference between missing heirs investigations and missing persons investigations is that in many cases, private investigators don't really have a name or a location to begin with. Things get even stickier when the trail starts with a person who has already passed away - getting a deceased person to give you information about his or her family is exactly as difficult as you'd think. Still, there are plenty of effective ways to locate heirs -

Heir Finder Services

Online databases aren't usually as effective when it comes to tracking people - they're usually limited in scope and can't get into the same nooks and crannies that a real person can. But the state of California controller's office has a great database that allows prospective heirs to check on missing money with the ease of a ten second search. It's an amazing resource that everyone should use as a starting point if you're lucky enough to be a resident. If you or your friends don't live in California or a state with a similar resource, things get a little dicier.

Genealogy

This is the quickest way to find a missing heir if they're one or two generations back and you know all the players involved. But things can get thorny if the family isn't tightly knit. One of the problems faced by those searching for missing heirs is that family units are far more dispersed then they were even twenty years ago. One side of the family might live in the same state, and the other side might be spread across the country. And often when families become separated by great distances, people lose track of when their extended family members live.

If you're in a situation like this, you need to be smart and ask questions. Human intelligence is always the best tool that a private investigator has at his disposal. Ask about siblings, ex-spouses, and children, as these are the most reliable ways to trace a person. Nobody leaves their kids without good reason, and nobody forgets about a spouse completely.

Public Records

Birth records, marriages, debts, a credit report - all of these are inexorably tied to a person no matter where they go in life. Even negative stuff like bankruptcies, foreclosures, and liens can be useful!

Finding a missing store of money or missing heirs can be a time consuming and intense search, but we can make it simple. In a field this broad, the most important thing you can do is get a consultation with a professional who can give answers that are unique to your particular situation. Don't delay, visit http://www.privateinvestigatorservices.org/ today!

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Tactics Used by Disability Insurance Companies Against Claimants to Deny Claims

To protect their businesses and their shareholders, disability insurance companies have made it hard for the average person to file a claim and obtain the benefits that they signed up to receive. When a person successful files for benefits on a disability insurance policy, it is long-term and very expensive to the companies.

Because of the laws governing disability insurance policies were written, there are no penalties in place when companies deny or delay claims. If you have to fight for your disability benefits and it takes a year, during which time you lose your home and life savings, there is no punishment or penalty to the disability insurance company. If you win in a court case, you will receive what they were supposed to pay you in the first place. The only thing that the insurance company loses is the time of their in-house law firm, while people who are sick or injured can lose much more. That is why it is important to know as much as possible about disability insurance, the process of filing a claim and the process of fighting for a claim to protect yourself.

Insurance companies employ many medical professionals to investigate claims. They have staffs of nurses and doctors who do nothing but read medical records and review diagnostic tests all day long to build cases against claimants. There are many instances that we have seen where the medical reviewer only sees a small part of the person's medical file - important documents that clearly verify a serious illness are left out. Is this deliberate or just poor record management? It is hard to know - but the bottom line is that disability insurance claimants have to fight to make sure that their complete medical records have been examined.

Insurance companies often use in-house medical staffers to contact treating physicians, review claims and write letters that are not accurate to help build cases against claimants. A typical scenario: the medical staffer calls the doctor's office, speaks about the claimant, and then the insurance company staffer sends a letter to the doctor's office confirming the conversation. The problem is, the letter is not entirely accurate and does not reflect the conversation that took place. Some facts are twisted, others are left out entirely. The critical part is this: the letter will contain a statement that says "unless we hear back from you by (a certain date), you accept the statements in the letter as fact."

Doctors, office managers and their own staffers are busy, and responding to this letter is not their top priority. When no one responds, or when the response comes after the date, the insurance company uses that as an agreement with the contents of the letter, even if the letter is totally inaccurate and contradicts every piece of information in the patient's medical record.

Today it is inexpensive for insurance companies to use video surveillance to monitor claimant activities. If you have filed a claim and a van or truck shows up on your block that does not seem to have any identifying marks or workers taking out equipment or making a delivery, it is entirely possible that surveillance is taking place. If you have a disability like fibromyalgia, where some days you cannot get out of bed and other days you feel almost normal, the videotape surveillance will only show you on a good day. This can create a difficult situation. If however your medical records reflect the unpredictable nature of your illness, you have a better chance at fighting the challenge to your disability insurance claim.

Frankel & Newfield's knowledge of rapidly changing laws in the field of disability insurance and our efficient and cost-effective approach to resolving matters at any stage is of great value to our clients. The insurance companies and their lawyers know us and they know our reputation for aggressive representation. Call our offices to speak with a partner about your situation at 1-877-LTD-CLAIM (1-877-583-2524).

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