Probate timescales - Oct 21, any recent experience?

MJB1208

Megandlg said:

Algie said:

Megandlg said:

Still not showing on the Find a Will pages on www.gov.uk though? Not sure how long it takes to appear on there? 

This notice is appearing on the website today.
Maintenance: We are experiencing technical difficulties and grants issued after 23/11/2021 may not be currently available for order.
Might explain why it is not showing.

Yes, this has appeared on the site today, since I posted this morning. Just hope it doesn’t take too long for the hard copies to come, as I need to progress the house sale. 

Mine arrived today. Two days after it was granted 👍

RociCap

RociCap said:

A (small) update: having spoken to them again this afternoon, a very nice woman who seemed to have a better idea of what was going on said she could see our case was actually still flagged as only having been 'live' for 3.5 weeks - i.e. the time they've had our paper documents, minus the stopped time - and wasn't due to be looked at for ages yet.

However, she was shocked that we'd been told so many different things and could see clearly that we'd been messed about a bit - she also agreed that as the stop on our case wasn't our fault, it was a simple estate, and had been with them for quite some time, that she was escalating it and it would now be dealt with as a priority (by a particular team for urgent cases, which a different adviser of theirs swore didn't exist!).

She said she thought it'd be done before Christmas, but couldn't guarantee it. 

While it doesn't mean much as there's no consistency whatsoever whenever we call and I'm not getting my hopes up, she was very apologetic and seemed sure it would be very soon (as opposed to weeks). Maybe she was just trying to get us off the phone before she goes on her Christmas break ... but it definitely pays off to keep calling them (or at least hopefully it does) because you get new snippets of information each time!

Finally have the grant!

So overall, for simple account with no IHT to pay and 2 beneficiaries:

• Applied online 30th Sept, posted documents same day
• Documents marked as received 12th Oct
• Asked to update declaration due to name spelling issue on 12th Oct, done within an hour of the email
• When called on 19th Nov as hadn't heard anything yet (and impatient - was not yet the 8 weeks), found out the case had been stopped on 12th Oct and they 'hadn't seen' the updated information we'd sent back/it hadn't been added to our case. Then told it would be 6 weeks despite this being their error
• Called again on 27th Nov to keep nagging, then told it would actually be 8 weeks from date it was unstopped (19th Nov)
• Called again 6th Dec, was told it should be *much* sooner than 8 weeks we'd been told and it would have priority as had now been with them for a while
• Called again 17th December, told they were very sorry we'd been messed around and that they were escalating it to an urgent team that we'd previously told didn't exist and it should be within a few days
• Called again 22nd December as heard nothing, was told it was definitely with urgent team and should have been within 24 hours, but could take up to a week. Given that it was now several working days after this escalation, phone operator agreed to put a note on account to urgent team to ask them to expedite it (no idea if this is real or just something they say to get you to go away). She said at the time she hoped it'd be by end of the day, but this didn't happen
• Received notification that grant had been approved today (29th Dec)

So: 12 weeks and 6 days since online submission, 11 weeks and 1 day since documents marked as received by them, 5 weeks and 5 days since we first chased/got the stop removed.

If we hadn't called to chase, they'd still have bits of information they hadn't flagged as needing to go into our file, so I think the moral of the story is keep chasing them!

kipsterno1

Thanks for the update, I found it very useful.
I'm going to put off chasing mine until early January just with all the bank holidays and staff shortages.

Poundcat

Online Probate is designed to test the patience of saints. Our very simple case took 20 weeks (submitted in July).   Tax was agreed very quickly.  We've  been accumulating bills (albeit not huge ones) on the property which would have been easier to sell in the middle of summer rather than mid-winter.

We were first lulled into a false sense of security because then Probate acknowledged receipt within a week and asked a question which we had gone to some lengths to explain in the application.  We answered by return but this email was never filed on the case.  We discovered this when we phoned after 8 weeks (40 minutes to get through) to discover that the case had been "stopped".  All good, we thought, when the very nice lady confirmed that she'd seen the forwarded email and put it on the file.

Not really, because our 8 week old case went to the back of the pile.  And so we continued.....

I was promised that it would be expedited.  All that seemed to achieve was that somebody else looked at the case, didn't read the accompanying comments/emails and asked an almost identical question to the one we'd answered in July.

As the weeks progressed, I discovered that webchat was sometimes available.  First thing on a Saturday was a good time to try. 

This gave me a written record of what we were discussing.

At 16 weeks, they came up with a new excuse for stopping the case.  Apparently they hadn't received IHT425 from HMRC.  Even THEY could see that this was unlikely to be the case (but it was useful to have all the back-up discussions in writing).

So my advice to to use webchat from week 8 day 1 and then check as often as you can cope with to make sure they haven't lost/misfiled anything.  It shouldn't be this difficult.

RociCap

Poundcat said:

So my advice to to use webchat from week 8 day 1 and then check as often as you can cope with to make sure they haven't lost/misfiled anything.  It shouldn't be this difficult.

Agreed - checking in often felt awful, as I imagine they're very busy, but we were told something different every time we spoke to them and their system seems to be a mess, so we were finding bits of information out each time we spoke to them.

You've reminded me too, I called HMRC partway through the process to ensure they'd signed things off at their side (we messed up doing the probate application the same day we submitted the IHT forms rather than waiting the recommended 10 days so I wanted to check probate actually had it, but they assured us it'd been sent to probate and that wasn't the hold up).

I imagine covid is having a pretty detrimental effect but it's a terribly-run system and their operators are either badly trained or told to just say absolutely anything to get you off the phone, because nothing they said matched up with previous operators' advice/updates. 

Pennylane

You are all very fortunate that your Grant of Probates have gone through whether it’s weeks or months.  I have now been waiting well over a year because a malicious person put a caveat on my application so it has been stopped.  We have paid out large sums to the solicitor and written many letters to this person who never responds.  The system is very unfair and the Probate  Office are not very helpful.  Nightmare! 

la_ra

Anyone have any more recent experiences we’ve been waiting since 19/11 now and still haven’t heard anything. 

Indrute02

la_ra said:

Anyone have any more recent experiences we’ve been waiting since 19/11 now and still haven’t heard anything. 

Vendor applied end of July. Still nothing  

rjandhl

Straightforward will.
IHT and Probate forms completed on line and submitted 6/1/22
Will and cover sheet posted tracked 7/1/22, delivered 10/1/22
E mail acknowledgement of receipt 12/1/22, shortly followed by e mail confirming that application had been approved and to allow up to ten days for receipt of Grant of Probate.
Hardcopy grant received 14/1/22.
Whole process completed in just over a week.
Impressed.

kipsterno1

la_ra said:

Anyone have any more recent experiences we’ve been waiting since 19/11 now and still haven’t heard anything. 

Applied 04/11, receipt acknowledgement 14/12 immediately follewed by a request for further information. Replied to that same day and nothing since.