English Estates

1895

You Will Save Time and Money by Letting Them Alone.

"It always amuses me when some poor deluded soul comes into my office and wants me to recover a vast English estate."

Thus spoke a well known attorney.

"And why does it amuse you?"

"Because," said the lawyer, "there is so much folly in such cases. I suppose there are not a dozen families in Cincinnati who have not some tradition or another about a great inheritance over the water. For generation after generation these chimerical hopes are nursed until finally some branch of the family with more money than judgment concludes to prosecute the claim. The result is nearly always the same. The victims come out of the experience with less money and more judgment.

"Of course there are rare instances in which Americans have recovered money from the estates of foreign ancestors, but in the great multitude of cases the rights of the claimants have been so long delayed or were so imaginary to begin with that it is only a waste of time and money to pursue them.

"I have handled many claims for foreign inheritances, and in just one case was there anything realized. After fighting for 12 years my client succeeded in proving his interest in some English property. The litigation, however, stirred up about 2,000 other heirs, and after the estate was divided and the costs were paid my client got precisely $4.20.

"Let me give you a piece of advice: If your family are heirs to untold millions in Europe, don't breathe it to a soul. Get all the satisfaction you can out of the reflection that you ought to be in the house of lords and the master of an old ancestral home, but keep your weekly wages in your pocket." — Cincinnati Tribune.