One of the cases I am working on right now is one of those “one in thousand” estates where the decedent left no close relatives. She was an only child, her mother died when she was six years old and her father when she was a young adult and without any information about aunts and uncles which she was aware of. From an eastern European immigrant family her father changed his name upon naturalization as a U.S. citizen in the 1930s. Other relatives in his family settled in New York, Michigan and California. Along with the apparent difficulty in spelling eastern European names consistently and name changes upon naturalization it may, at first glance, seem almost impossible to construct a family tree that includes cousins and first cousins once removed as required under the New York Estate, Probate and Trust Law.

What is a practitioner to do? Well, with such tools as ancestry.com, footnote.com, access to NARA archives (where certified copies of naturalization declarations and petitions are available) and other online sources it is possible to begin reconstructing a family tree. Caveat, if you can do this at the time the decedent’s will is drafted and have them execute a family tree affidavit this will be useful when trying to probate their will.

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