Finding a lost relative or birth family

Start with what you know

A trace is only as good as its starting point, and the details that matter most are rarely the ones people think of. Write down everything you hold before you begin, however old: full name and any former names, approximate date and place of birth, the last address you knew and roughly when it was current, occupation or trade, the names of their parents, siblings and children, and anything that would appear on a public record, such as a marriage, a business or a house purchase.

A date of birth, even an approximate one, is the single most useful item. It separates the person you are looking for from everyone who shares their name, and a common name without a date of birth is where many searches stall.

The free routes to try first

Several kinds of search have a dedicated route that costs little or nothing, and an investigator who takes your money without pointing you to it is not serving you well.

Someone who is missing rather than estranged. If a relative has disappeared and you are worried for their safety, report it to the police. There is no waiting period. The police have powers and access that no private firm has, and the national missing persons charity runs a free service that can pass a message to a missing adult who does not want their whereabouts disclosed.

A birth parent, or a child placed for adoption. Adopted adults in England and Wales have a statutory right to information about their birth records, and both adopted people and birth relatives can register an interest in contact on the official contact register held by the General Register Office. Searches that cross an adoption are handled through approved intermediary agencies, which are permitted to access records closed to everyone else and are trained to make an approach that neither party will regret. A private investigator is usually the wrong first step for an adoption search, and the regulated route should be exhausted before you consider one.

A relative who served in the armed forces. Service charities and veterans’ associations often hold contact routes for former personnel, and regimental associations will sometimes forward a letter.

A relative abroad. Consular and diaspora organisations, and the equivalent of the electoral and civil registers in the country concerned, are the usual starting point. UK-based searches do not reach far outside the UK.

What you can lawfully search yourself

The public records that underpin professional tracing are open to anyone. The open version of the electoral roll, the indexes of births, marriages and deaths, Companies House officer records, the Land Registry, probate records and press archives all cost little to consult and can take a search a long way. Social media adds photographs, connections and places, though it should be read with care: profiles go stale, names are shared, and a confident identification from a single photograph is often wrong.

What you cannot do, and what no investigator can do for you, is reach any record that is not public. The Data Protection Act 2018 makes it an offence to obtain someone’s personal data by deception, so a call to a GP surgery, a utility or a former employer while pretending to be a relative or an official is a crime, not a technique. There is also no lawful private route to DVLA, benefits, tax, health or telephone records. Our guide on what an investigator can and cannot do sets out the boundary in full.

What an investigator adds

A trace from a professional firm is the same public record work done systematically, followed by confirmation. The registers are worked in order of reliability and every hit and miss is recorded, so that a result can be explained and a negative result shows what was searched. An address found on one register is treated as a lead until it is supported by a second independent source or by a brief period of lawful observation from a public place. Confirmation matters because an old address delivered with confidence is worse than no address at all.

An investigator also brings a habit of proportionality. The task is to find where a person is, not to build a file on how they live. The UK GDPR applies to a trace as it does to any processing of personal data, and a genuine firm records a legitimate interests assessment that names why you are looking and what will not be collected.

Why contact goes through an intermediary

When a trace succeeds, our default is to make the approach on your behalf rather than to hand over the address. A short, plain letter explains who has asked us to find them and why, and invites them to make contact with you, or with us, if they wish. The traced person decides.

This protects both sides. It spares you a doorstep meeting that may go badly, and it spares the person you have found a shock they did not choose. People who are approached this way respond far more often than people who are simply written to at an address they did not know anyone had, and when they decline, they decline without the relationship being damaged further. Where we hold the address and the person asks that it not be shared, we do not share it.

When we will not take the search

Before accepting a tracing instruction we ask why the person is being looked for and what happened when contact was lost. We decline where a non-molestation order or similar order is in place, where the estrangement followed violence, threats or coercive control, or where the search reads as a way to reach someone who has deliberately made themselves hard to find. We also stop, and do not disclose the address, if the trace itself reveals that the person is likely to be hiding from the person asking. These are the situations in which a trace becomes a tool of harassment under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997, and no fee justifies that.

If the person you are looking for is an adult who chose to leave and has left no route back, the honest answer is that the law protects that choice, and that a message passed through a charity or an intermediary is the most anyone can lawfully offer.

What to expect from a trace

A tracing instruction is usually a fixed fee agreed in advance, set out in an engagement letter, with any field confirmation costed separately and only with your agreement. The result is a short report stating the confirmed address or the outcome of the approach, the sources that support it, and how confident we are in plain words. A negative result is reported with the same care, along with what could still be tried. Our missing persons tracing page describes the service, and what you receive explains the report format.

This guide is general information about the law of England and Wales as we understand it at the date shown at the foot of the page. It is not legal advice and does not take account of your circumstances. Before acting on anything here, particularly where court proceedings, a criminal complaint or an employment decision are involved, take advice from a solicitor. We are investigators, not lawyers, and we will say so if a question you bring us needs one.

Related services