Speaker: Maritess Bott
Maritess:
I appreciate you listening to our blog post today or watching the video. Of course, my name is Maritess Bott of Bott & Associates and today I want to talk to you about somebody from Chicago. Good ol’—our hometown here. This is an article in Chicago Magazine, so I’m definitely going to give full credit. It was published on March 7th in 2023, just a few weeks ago.
Basically, it’s about a gentleman who had died in the area of Gage Park. He had a bungalow home there. I think this home had been in his family for a long time. He lived there with his two older sisters that had predeceased him. So he was the last person standing there.
His name was Joseph Stancak. Joseph was 87. He lived alone, he didn’t have a spouse, he never had children, and he was pretty frugal. The neighbors knew him to be the one walking around, getting his mail, making sure his front stoop was always clear of snow.
What happened in 2016 was one of the postal carriers noticed that he wasn’t getting his mail, which was odd because Joseph always got his mail. The postal carrier actually called the fire station and said, can you please do a checkup? The firefighter went in, knocked on the door, but no answer. They said, we’ll wait a little bit, wait a couple days. A couple days later they came back and said, it’s been long enough, and they did a forced entry. Sadly, yes, they found him already dead in his home.
Normally, this would not be a big deal in terms of a death, in the sense that we do hear a lot about single people with no family around dying without anyone really realizing it. Luckily, there were some neighbors who also noticed and also this postal carrier that found out about Joseph.
Fast forward. This was 2016. He died, the house was sold, and that was 2016. Fast forward to present day, 2023.
In 2022, the county treasurer noticed that there was some unclaimed property in the estate’s coffers. His team was basically saying, it’s getting pretty high here and we need to find out who this money belongs to. After it was said and done, they realized all this money totaled up to be about $11 million. Yeah—so this is Joseph, who lived in a little house, who was very unassuming—never would have thought that he had accumulated $11 million.
The treasurer’s office hired a company called Linking Assets. They are researchers who try to find people—heirs and people connected to estates—and figure out who this belongs to. They hired this company, and it took them years to find out who everybody was.
Joseph was a Polish immigrant. His parents came here with him, and most of their relatives were out of town or out of the country. He had a few here. Joseph and his two sisters didn’t have children, so there was no immediate descendant.
Now, what does that mean? The state of Illinois says we have to distribute the $11 million based on the statutes of Illinois, which say: if he had a spouse, children, siblings, or parents, it would go to them. But since Joseph had none of those relationships that were alive, the law says we have to go upward to go downward. What does that mean? We have to create a very, very, very big family tree.
That’s exactly what this company did, along with a law firm who had to file this and open this estate. After talking and getting translators, they found 119 relatives. Insane—119 relatives. Only some were here in the United States. There were only about six in the Chicagoland area and a few outside of the Chicagoland area, but the rest were in Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic. They all were surprised about getting this phone call that they had this long-lost relative named Joseph, and they are going to get their money eventually.
So far right now, they’re still trying to pay out final bills. As you can imagine, a lot of this money will go to the company that found all of these people. A lot of the money will also go to taxes. There’s some estate tax due because he died during a time when the exemption was only a certain amount, and then the balance will be taxed on the estate tax level. Then of course, there are going to be lawyer fees. By the time we pay everybody off, the 119 people will each get a piece of this.
According to this article, it says that they will all be getting their money sometime—earliest is probably late summer.
Either way, everybody was obviously a little bit tickled by the fact that they had this long-lost relative in Chicago, United States of America, that could potentially give them some money that will change their lives. The amount they get is based on what level they’re at in the family tree. This tree is quite long. The lawyer showed it to be extremely long in how they had to build it.
Essentially, each person gets a portion based on how they were related to Joseph and at what level.
Either way, the moral of the story is—why is this important to you when you’re watching this podcast?
The moral of the story is: I wish Joseph would have written down his wishes. I believe that he would not have wanted this money to just go to random people that he probably never even knew. He probably never met all these relatives, and we hope that this money—he could have created a will, a simple will. We would have wanted him to do a trust, so it’s much faster and easier, but he could have given it to his favorite charity, to a couple of relatives or friends, or to people who helped him along the way in life. Whoever those people were that were important to him could have received this $11 million, as opposed to random relatives.
And I can’t implore this more to anyone who has relatives or family members who don’t have children. So there are no natural descendants, or they’ve never been married—or are not married right now—then it’s even more important to do an estate plan, because we want that money to go to the people that you want it to go to. Not to various parties and lawyers and taxes and all sorts of places that should not be getting the money.
Plan ahead, instead of having this ongoing situation. He died in 2016, and we’re lucky if it finishes up in 2023. We’re talking seven years in already. A lot of money that could have helped a lot more people that Joseph knew, as opposed to random people.
If you have any questions about this or want to do your own estate plan, definitely give us a call here at Bott & Associates. We’ll be happy to chat with you.
Thanks and have a great day!
[Applause] [Music]
