Birmingham residents could be sitting on a fortune, with 146 unclaimed estates currently listed in the city. These estates belong to people who died without a will and with no known next of kin, according to the Bona Vacantia (BV) list.
When someone dies intestate, their estate becomes 'vacant goods'. Bona Vacantia is the term for ownerless estates that pass to the Crown if they remain unclaimed. The list is publicly available, and family members and heirs have just 12 years to claim an estate once it has been reported to the Crown.
What is Bona Vacantia and how does it work?
The Bona Vacantia list details estates of individuals who have passed away apparently intestate and with no known relatives. These estates are then held by the Crown pending any claims. The list was reinstated by the Government Legal Department in January 2026 after a temporary suspension in July 2025 to safeguard against fraud.
To protect the list's integrity, limited data is now provided, but it still offers sufficient information for people to identify a family member. Estates must be worth more than £500 to be listed, though the exact value is not disclosed.
Experts urge Midlands residents to check the list
Simonne Llewellyn, CEO of Finders International, a UK firm of professional probate genealogists, highlighted the scale of the opportunity: "We want to highlight to everyone in the Midlands that more than 280 estates are waiting to be claimed from the government, who is sitting on the fortunes of over five thousand estates across the England and Wales."
She added: "In many of these cases there are often relatives still living in the area who may be entitled to claim the inheritance. Being a beneficiary to an estate of someone you didn't know, or barely knew of, is more common than people expect."
Recent Birmingham entries and how to claim
The most recent Birmingham entries on the list include John Roberts Marson (04/11/2025), Mark Harrison (25/02/2025), John Ward (10/12/2024), Ella Elizabeth Quarrell (07/11/2024), Frank Harrison (23/05/2023), Matthew Standley (12/05/2023), Michael Tehrani (04/04/2023), George Christopher Keasey (09/01/2023), Georgina Reynolds (11/09/2022), and Arkadiusz Leszek Granek (25/01/2022).
Elsewhere in the Midlands, Wolverhampton has 27 unclaimed estates, Walsall has 16, and West Bromwich has 11. Anyone can search the publicly available list and make a claim, but it can be an expensive and time-consuming process, as claimants must prove their relationship to the deceased.
Claimants must provide a family tree with marriage and birth dates, along with copies of certificates for each person between the claimant and the deceased. It is also worth noting that one claimant is unlikely to be the sole heir. Llewellyn explained: "Meticulous research ensures estates can be administered properly, reduced the risk of future claims and ensures estates are distributed fairly and legally. It is an important part of the legal process that all entitled heirs to an intestate estate are found and receive what they're due."
