How to search the Bona Vacantia list

Bona Vacantia is a Latin term meaning "ownerless goods". In England and Wales, when a person dies intestate (without a valid will) and no entitled relatives come forward to claim their estate, the estate passes to the Crown as bona vacantia.

The Government Legal Department (GLD) administers these estates on behalf of the Crown. Separately, estates of people connected to the Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall are handled by those Duchies rather than the GLD.

The GLD publishes a searchable list of unclaimed estates on its website. This list is updated regularly — typically fortnightly — as new estates are referred to the Crown. Each entry includes the deceased's surname, forename (if known), date of death, and place of death.

Under the intestacy rules that apply in England and Wales, only blood relatives and legal spouses or civil partners are entitled to inherit. The order of priority runs from spouse or civil partner, then children, then parents, then brothers and sisters, then half-siblings, then grandparents, then uncles and aunts, and finally half-uncles and half-aunts.

Cousins, step-children, and cohabiting partners have no automatic entitlement under intestacy law, regardless of how close the relationship may have been in practice.

There is no time limit for a spouse or child to make a claim. For more distant relatives, the practical deadline is twelve years from the date the estate was referred to the Crown, after which the funds may be paid into the National Purse and become much harder to recover.

The official GLD list can be searched on the government website by surname. The search is exact — if you search for "Smith" you will only find entries recorded as "Smith", not "Smythe" or "Smithe".

FindMyLegacy improves on this by using phonetic matching based on the Double Metaphone algorithm. When you search for a surname, you will see both exact matches and results for surnames that sound similar — catching spelling variations that would otherwise be missed.

To get started, register for a free account at FindMyLegacy and enter any family surname in the search box. You can also add surnames to your watchlist so you receive an email alert the moment a new matching estate appears on the list.

Each entry on the Bona Vacantia list includes a BV reference number (for example, C1234/2024), the deceased's surname and forename where known, the date of death, and the place of death.

Not all fields are always populated. Some older entries may have no forename, or an approximate date of death rather than an exact one. This is because the GLD only publishes information it has been able to verify.

The date added to the list is also shown on FindMyLegacy. Estates added in the last 30 days are highlighted in green — these are fresh listings where no investigation has yet begun, giving you more time to come forward.

If you find a name on the list that could belong to a relative, the first step is to verify the details. Check whether the date and place of death are consistent with what you know about the person. If the entry has a BV reference, you can contact the GLD directly to ask whether an investigation is already underway.

Before contacting the GLD, gather as much documentation as you can: your own birth certificate, the deceased's death certificate if available, and any documents that link you to the deceased through the family tree (marriage certificates, birth certificates of connecting relatives).

You can also check probate records using the UK government's probate search service to see whether a grant of representation has already been issued, which would mean the estate has already been administered.

Once you are confident you have found a genuine match and that you are likely to be entitled under intestacy law, open a case on FindMyLegacy to track your research and evidence, and consider instructing a solicitor who specialises in estate claims.