Will the law on dormant assets in March allow genealogists to make their mark in the financial sector? Lydia Waltisperger and Thierry Jolivalt at the inheritance genealogy firm Westrich Gen, hope so. While recognising that the road is still long and that bringing two cultures together--that of compliance among bankers and insurers and that of completeness among genealogists--will require a great deal of work.

The genealogy profession was born out of the need to construct compliant inheritance arrangements. It took off in France some 200 years ago, but not by chance. At the time, France was a country with a civil code and an administrative organisation--civil state, tax administration, land registry, etc.--which made it possible to carry out appropriate research.

In Luxembourg, genealogists rely on different sources to conduct inheritance research. “What you have to understand is that this job does not just consist of searching, it consists of cross-checking”, explains Jolivalt.

25% of inheritance declarations inaccurate

The main source is the civil registry, which in Luxembourg groups together birth, marriage and death records by municipality. These records are noted in what are known as the decennial tables. Genealogists also use population registers (files that group together entire families), cemetery registers, information from the Registration Duties, Estates and VAT Authority (AED), such as declarations of inheritance, donations, divisions and the land register. In addition, they use judicial information such as certificates of inheritance, divorce and adoption decrees, and naturalisation or reinstatement files. They may also find ‘unusual’ sources such as old censuses or military records.

The quality of these documents are not always as good as one might expect. This is the case with inheritance declarations, “research tools that are supposed to be reliable, but which are not so reliable”, observed Jolivalt. At least until the early 1980s, he adds.

Why did this happen? The various sources remained fragmentary and notaries operated “as best they could”. This was all the more easy because at the time, real estate was not worth anything--at least not enough to go looking for descendants who had emigrated to neighbouring countries or the United States. Jolivalt estimated that 20% to 25% of inheritance declarations were thus, if not false, at least very incomplete. “All this is completely different today. With the values at stake, we can no longer afford this. Luxembourg notaries are very careful about this and that’s why they very often use our services.”

Increasingly inaccessible sources

Access to the information that the genealogist needs to work is not free. Authorisations are required for access. These authorisations are issued either by the national archives, or by the public prosecutor, mainly for civil status records, or by a justice of the peace for registration records. And in recent years, access has been reduced. Since 2016, population files have become inaccessible. “Lawyers can no longer access people’s addresses and therefore can no longer summon someone. They can’t find them anymore, [public authorities] don’t answer [their queries]. This is unbelievable.” The law on archives has set a time limit of 50 years for them to become public. Unless it can be shown that the person concerned has been dead for more than 25 years. “This does not help us to find living people.” The entry into force of the General Data Protection Regulation has made institutions hostile to any requests for information. “Everyone is afraid.”

As a consequence in the field, “you lose a considerable amount of time with the risk of being tempted to take shortcuts, not going all the way, not cross-checking all the sources”, he said.

And you shouldn’t count on the digitised archives available online and the genealogy sites on the internet, which are “very fashionable sites, but rarely 100% reliable”, according to Waltisperger. They are “tools that provide clues, but do not allow complete genealogies to be made.”

Working with notaries and representatives of heirs

Westrich Gen works mainly for notaries, lawyers appointed as trustees of estates or directly for heirs who are interested in finding any missing heirs in order to liquidate an estate.

Property developers also use their services. “In Luxembourg, there are many plots of land that are still registered in the name of people who died 60 years ago or more. The land has been overlooked in inheritances, and from generation to generation these plots of land have remained registered in the name of people who died in 1920, for example, a time when land was worth nothing,” Waltisperger and Jolivalt stated. They see themselves as auxiliaries to the notary or the representative of the heirs.

“For the latter, we help them to assert their rights, for a percentage of the sums to be recovered. Unlike a lawyer, where the client has to pay large sums of money very quickly, Westrich Gen will be paid when the case is closed. Cases can take years to be closed, especially when there are several heirs. And not all of them live in Luxembourg. We have an extremely high financial risk. A case that we have started and not finished is not worth a cent to us, it will only cost us.”

A genealogist has to deal with two major problems.

The first, specific to the grand duchy, is linked to the country’s status as a land of migration. Many Luxembourgers have emigrated to neighbouring countries or to the United States. “In 80% of our cases, we have to do research abroad. And in 70% of cases we have to search in the United States,” said Waltisperger. “This makes the search time very uncertain.”

There are also the reactions of the people they contact. “Luxembourgers are very suspicious people,” stated Jolivalt. “In the grand duchy, people can come and see us and get information, which reassures them. But heirs living abroad will often prefer to ignore us, which will block a succession.” Persuading them can be a real challenge.

Conquering the Square

The law on ‘dormant assets’ opens up new business opportunities for genealogists.

Westrich Gen has been preparing for this for several years now. The company was approved in 2019 as an insurance sector professional (professionnel du secteur des assurances) as a claims adjuster. “This gave us access to the insurance market. The accreditation is also a quality label that testifies to good practice in data security.” Westrich Gen is not accredited as a financial sector professional (PSF) by the Luxembourg Financial Sector Supervisory Commission (CSSF) because it is not eligible, “as it does not have a predominant financial activity”. The company is nevertheless a member of the Luxembourg Bankers’ Association (ABBL), in category C dedicated to activities ancillary to the financial sector.

“Surprisingly, we have not yet worked with any Luxembourg banks in the past,” said Waltisperger. “However, foreign banks have come to us, attracted by our level of data security. Grand Ducal banks have the same demands in terms of data security and are starting to contact us.”

Waltisperger and Jolivalt wondered about the content of the missions that will eventually be entrusted to them: “what will be the amounts involved, will there be a strong international component and when will the cases come up and what will be the quality of the information on the account holders?” Jolivalt expected that they will be faced with accounts that could be opened as far back as the 1930s. At the time, formalities for opening accounts were much more reduced than those that exist today.

The other big question will be the depth of the research to be carried out. And on this level, two cultures clash. That of the genealogists, “a culture of authenticity and completeness” and that of the bankers, which is “a culture of conformity”. “If for us, an estate search must be as complete as possible, the bankers with whom we spoke felt that the law did not place an obligation on them to achieve results. For them, the results of the searches must be able to be shown to the supervisory authority and serve as a discharge of duties.”

Originally published in French by and translated for Delano