by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

If your phone rings and it’s someone named André Dionne verbalizing through your earpiece, it might be a very good thing. “People feel like I’m Santa Claus,” he says.

The Laval-based Dionne spends three-quarters of his working hours seeking and distributing unclaimed inheritances. He’s one of what he estimates as five local practising estate treasure-hunters who discover estates held in government limbo. He finds those who died with something in their pockets, digs up heirs and delivers cash they never dreamed of receiving, and takes a 25 per cent cut for his troubles. He says it’s a happy relationship. “They get this money that just seems to fall from the sky.”

The practice was about as discreet as it could be until Marcel de Montigny, 63, a retired accountant, started asking loud questions. De Montigny noticed that about 40 relatives were suddenly receiving cheques of $16,000, the booty of somebody named Jacques Thibodeau, a forgotten loner who lived at 3166 Sherbrooke E. Thibodeau, who turned out to be de Montigny’s great-grandfather’s nephew’s son, died in 1998 with $2-million and no will.

While others in the family tree received cheques, de Montigny and about 20 similarly connected relations didn’t even get a wood nickel.

The rich and the dead

Dionne became liquidator of dead-man Thibodeau’s worldly possessions in 2001, after finding three of Thibodeau’s rural relatives, aged 87, 93 and 96. The trio signed a document putting Dionne in control of the will.

As in all such cases, Dionne says he learned of Thibodeau’s existence—or former existence—by scanning published government notices seeking relatives of the deceased.

Most isolated people whose estate falls into the control of the state don’t have two nickels to rub together. The trick to finding the rich dead among the penniless majority is to cross-reference the names with a list of houses liquidated by the government.

When Dionne found that the government had auctioned off Thibodeau’s home, he smelled the happy aroma of cash. Once mandated by the family, Dionne was given a summary of the assets of the deceased loner by the provincial public curator, which was, at the time, responsible for Thibodeau’s estate. Dionne then found the heirs, and split the half-mil he snagged with his lawyer.

Dionne’s lawyer, François Marchand, declined to reveal how much he had earned from his work on the Thibodeau file.

Splitting heirs

Inheritance-hunting is little known even among local genealogists. “In the States, you see it sometimes, and in France they have a legal standing, but here in Quebec it’s usually notaries that do it and they in turn hire genealogists to work on each case,” says Marcel Fournier, president of the French Canadian Genealogical Society.

Marcel de Montigny wasn’t cut in on the booty left by Thibodeau. This exclusion led him to scrutinize Dionne’s work. His main knock is that Dionne only signed with three of the 40-plus heirs.

“Dionne should have approached all the heirs and asked them to appoint him,” says de Montigny. “It’s unfair, because some got what was theirs and others got more than they should have, and the one who got most was André Dionne.”

The Civil Code says an estate liquidator is entitled to remuneration “fixed by the heirs.” De Montigny says that more heirs should have been involved in the decisions.

By law, an inheritance held by the government must be claimed within 10 years and distributed among six degrees of relatives. In their complex genealogical dispute, Dionne has determined that de Montigny is not an heir, and as a result he’s not entitled to any explanations of the goings-on of Thibodeau’s estate. De Montigny vehemently contests this genealogical interpretation.

Relations between the two sides are now at the registered-letter stage. The latest episode saw Dionne’s lawyer sending a letter asking one of the disinherited to stop bothering Dionne.

Meanwhile, de Montigny says he’d like to take the case before a judge but the amount involved, around $17,000, “wouldn’t be worth it.”

Dionne, on the other hand, says that de Montigny’s bellyaching runs counter to the emotions most express with his service, which, even at a quarter of the estate, he deems a bargain.

“Twenty-five per cent is still reasonable,” he says. “There are some in Toronto that take 39 per cent plus costs, and those are thieves, because that ends up over 50 per cent. I take the 25 per cent and pay all expenses. I am legally obliged to give the money to all heirs, and I don’t miss one.”

Dionne says that part of the craft of picking up stray inheritances lies in tossing back the minnows. “If it’s less than $50,000 nobody will even bother,” he says. “There’s a lot of costs involved.

“The people I deal with have no close families. When I find relatives, they usually don’t even know the name of the person,” continues Dionne. “It’s their money. It belongs to the family, not the government.”