Hi I was just wondering if someone would be able to tell me how I would access Wills & Estate Records for B.C. Any help much appreciated Cindy

Cindy: That all depends on WHEN and WHERE the estate was settled! If you are looking at fairly recent wills and estates, you would have to go to the actual court registry where the estate was handled. If you haven't a clue where that was done, you have to start with a search request to the Victoria registry of BC Supreme Court, which has the database covering the whole province from the early 1980's to the present. For older records, you must ask at BC Archives. A problem arises in researching these records because of the irregularity of transfering of court records from the originating court registries around the province, into the BC Archives. This is a complicated system to work with, because each court registry can do what they please! Best thing to do, is ask the staff at BC Archives about the cases that interest you. Give them the date, or rough date, and the place of residence, if you know it. You can end up very frustrated with this kind of search, if you go straight to the originating court registry, because of the problem of running into inexperienced front desk staff in some court registries. They may say they "don't have those records anymore" and therefore you'd think they are BC Archives. However, the files of that date may be warehoused somewhere outside the court registry, but legally still in the custody of the originating court registry. To the front desk staff, that means "they aren't here." They may not be aware that their own office is STILL the only place where that record can be called in, and viewed. So I recommend starting with BC Archives. There are some court registries still holding onto their 1950's probate files! But the one that wins the prize for confusing the public, is the court registry that holds onto the only index to their 1977 probate files, while they long ago turned the actual files over to the BC Archives! Research is fairly simple if you're looking for older probate files. In the bigger cities of BC, the indexes are mainly still on microfilm and the Index to the Central Wills Registry is also on microfilm at BC Archives. If you know roughly the date of death, the search doesn't take long, and you can go in and do it yourself, or request that staff do it - leave a message: http://www.bcarchives.gov.bc.ca/services/inquiry/accescom.htm For the smaller cities, you can do it right now, online with the search engine at BC Archives website. http://www.bcarchives.gov.bc.ca/cgi-bin/www2m The online finding aids list all the people with probate files for a great many of the smaller cities. You can also figure out which probate files ARE in the collection at BC Archives, if you are familiar with the names of the towns where the courts were located. Staff would give you some advice on this, if you are not familiar with British Columbia. The newly released search engine at BC Archives is a tremendous improvement. Up to last week, it was a tough job to search for common names, like Ernest Smith, and George Robertson. Just about impossible, because both first and last name would occur in nearly every group of probate files. But now, you can search on the exact name, so your search time is cut drastically. There are also online guides to searching for wills and probate files at BC Archives, but these are mostly for the use of people going to the Archives to do a search in person. http://www.bcarchives.gov.bc.ca/general/guides/ag_prob.htm http://www.bcarchives.gov.bc.ca/general/guides/ag_wills.htm Claudia ----Original Message----- From: Cindy Paradis [mailto:babyboo196@shaw.ca] Sent: January 20, 2002 9:51 AM To: can-british-columbia-l@rootsweb.com Subject: [CAN-BC] Wills & Estate Records Hi I was just wondering if someone would be able to tell me how I would access Wills & Estate Records for B.C. Any help much appreciated Cindy ==== CAN-BRITISH-COLUMBIA Mailing List ==== Visit the British Columbia Gen Web page at http://www.rootsweb.com/~canbc/