Is an email from a law firm saying I am named in a will real?
Unsolicited emails claiming a distant relative named you in a will are an advance-fee fraud. Legitimate estate solicitors do not contact beneficiaries by cold email.
Last reviewed: 1 August 2026
Explanation
The unclaimed inheritance scam relies on the small but plausible chance that you have a distant relative whose estate needs a beneficiary. A fake law firm or solicitor's email says you share a surname with a deceased client who left a substantial estate. To proceed, you are asked to pay legal fees, taxes, or document preparation costs. The firm name is fabricated or cloned from a real firm. No inheritance exists. Genuine probate solicitors locate beneficiaries through official genealogy records and government probate services — they verify your identity in person and never request payment before confirming entitlement.
The economics run on hope and sunk cost. The claimed estate is large enough that each fee — court stamp, transfer tax, anti-laundering certificate — looks trivial by comparison, and once you have paid one, abandoning the claim means admitting the earlier payments were wasted. That escalation, not the first fee, is where the real losses accumulate.
Verification is straightforward if an inheritance were real: probate is a public, documented process, the handling firm would appear on its jurisdiction's solicitor register with matching contact details, and no legitimate practitioner needs your money to release yours. A registry lookup and an independent call to the firm's listed number — not the number in the email — settles it in minutes.
Common red flags
- Cold email from a law firm you have never heard of
- Claim of inheritance from a distant or unknown relative
- Request for upfront legal fees or taxes to release the estate
- Vague details about the deceased that change between messages
What to do now
- Do not pay any fee
- Search the law firm name and jurisdiction independently to verify registration
- Contact the country's probate court if you believe an inheritance may be real
- Report the email to your national consumer fraud authority
Frequently asked questions
Is it possible to be named in a will by a stranger?
It is possible but rare. Genuine cases are handled through official probate channels and solicitors who can be verified on their professional register — never by a cold email.
The email includes official-looking documents with stamps and signatures. Are they proof?
No — death certificates, court letters, and bank statements are routinely forged for these schemes, often convincingly. Authenticity is established through official registers and independent contact, never through attachments the sender controls.