Dec 07 2008
Wealth Hunters: Givers or Takers?
TLC’s special Wealth Hunters aired tonight, and judging by the hits on my previous blog entry , I’d say average viewers were intrigued. After watching the show, I think viewers may be divided on their critique.
Wealth Hunters follows two investigators as they peruse public records, looking for unclaimed inheritances. Once they find a promising estate, they do extensive research to try and put together a family tree. Once they find possible heirs, they visit them in person with a contract and do a hard sell to get them to sign. The contract? It gives permission from the heirs to the investigators, to do all the legwork involved in claiming that inheritance, in return for 1/3 of the money. Once they get one heir to sign, they can delve deeper into court records to find out how much money is really there.
I think TLC shot an honest show. We see the investigator side and the inheritor side, and can make our own judgements about the whole scenario. It’s probably a whole world you never knew existed. The show’s narrator informs us at the beginning that this type of wealth hunting is a competitive business. Since the records are public, anyone at any time may access them. Investigators may do hours, days, weeks of research only to find out that other investigators have already started contacting the heirs–or the heirs have taken care of it themselves. There’s also the potential outcome that they may do all the legwork and then the heirs circumvent them and claim the full amount themselves.
The man and woman wealth hunter team may remind you of intense, go-getter real estate types. Like anyone in sales, these investigators’ first and foremost job is to try and get their commission, and get as large a one as possible. It’s an incredibly stressful way to make a living. We watch, fascinated, as the wealth hunters travel to several different locations to try and find these relatives. They get lost, they stop at a police station for directions, and they knock on the doors of total strangers and in many cases go into their homes. They are often met with skepticism, fear, and even outright rudeness (though the main family portrayed here were far more open and accomodating than I would have been). It’s necessary for the wealth hunters to be confident and adaptive, and even brave.
On the other side, you have those who end up receiving the inheritance. The family they focused on for most of the episode were separated from one another by circumstances over time, most devastatingly by Katrina. In many cases, siblings did not even know what had become of one another, and younger cousins were brought together with family they didn’t know existed. These were people who had lost everything they had, including their relatives. If anyone needed some extra money to help ease their burdens, it was this extended family. Though the division of the inheritance left each of them with roughly $8,000 to $15,000, in their current circumstances this was a fairly substantial amount of money. The family seemed grateful mostly for being brought together again, with the money as an added blessing.
The question that looms over all of this, is whether these wealth hunters are just people performing a worthy service and getting paid for it, or ethically challenged opportunists who prey on the less fortunate. The first commenters on my last entry feel it’s the latter. It definitely doesn’t seem fair when you do the math on another case shown on the episode–a “million dollar estate” with 100 heirs. Turns out the estate was only worth $100,000. If the wealth hunters went through the process (which they may not have bothered, due to expenses), they would get $33,000+. Each of the actual heirs would get $1,000. Certainly there seems something wrong in this. Watching these families who are struggling to make ends meet, it’s hard to imagine taking any commission and lessening the money these people recieve.
That said, if the wealth hunters hadn’t arrived, this family might never have known about the money at all. They didn’t even know their relative had died. I’m not sure what the legal red tape is, but if they had to hire their own lawyers, and perhaps get into squabbles over which family member deserved more money, their costs may have far outweighed what they ended up paying the investigators.
And the wealth hunters are doing a job. They do a lot of legwork and have to pay for travel out of their own pocket, any research fees, paperwork fees, lawyer fees, etc. They don’t get paid until the family inherits. This could all take a substantial amount of time, where they are working for no pay. What I wonder is what sort of salary they make over a year. Do they do these inheritance deals once a day, a week, every six months? Considering all the outfit changes the female wealth hunter went through, it seems they make a nice living. If this is the case, do they really need to take a third? Wouldn’t 20% do just as well, or 10%, to not hit the deserving families as hard?
Wealth Hunters was an intriguing program and worth watching–it was informative, thought-provoking, and often heart-breaking. Watch and decide for yourself–are the Wealth Hunters givers or takers, heroes or villians?
Check local listings to find the repeats of this special documentary, Wealth Hunters, on TLC.
Read more about the family involved in this episode at The Natchez Democrat website .
