Probate : 16 weeks and counting

oglop

Congrats! Looks like the probate office is getting better. I actually got an email from the HMCTS complaint people about a complaint I made...over 2 months ago. They basically just told me 'yeah there's delays but your probate is granted so congrats'! Without really addressing why I complained. Grrrr

My grant of probate also arrived at the solicitor's office. Now just gotta wait til she sends it to the bank and the bank unfreezes accounts. If this all takes longer than a week, I'm going to break something 

edit: solicitor said it usually takes 2 weeks.
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BooJewels

Delighted that your Grant finally arrived @oglop - shame the complaint didn't yield a better outcome.  Fingers crossed that between the solicitor and banks the rest doesn't take too much longer.  I feel a palpable sense of relief now we've got Probate - you feel like you're being held to ransom by them.  We even got paid out by NS&I last week, who seem to work in the same strange time space that lawyers do.

junebaby

We are now at 26 weeks and it’s driving me crazy. 

They wanted more information and asked for the email address and phone number of one of the witnesses. It took them 17 weeks before they asked for this. They say they sent an email to the witness which never arrived. If I hadn’t been chasing it we would never have known. I asked if they could resend it and the answer was no it had to go on the spreadsheet to be actioned. 

In the end, unbeknown to us, they posted out a witness statement. This then went back to Harlow and sat in the queue again to be scanned which took another 3 weeks. 

I asked my MP to get involved and he wrote to them 2 weeks ago and still nothing. 

Today I chased again and was told it couldn’t be escalated until next week as I was only on week 2 of the 3 week escalation cycle. It has already been escalated 3 times. 

Will probation ever be granted!!

oglop

BooJewels: ransom, exactly. The end is near and the hard parts are done. Wouldn't wish what I had gone through on my worst enemy!

Junebaby: all I can say is... I feel your pain. I know the exact feeling! Hope it isn't too much longer

tetrarch

UPDATE

Application Date : 10-Jan-23 
Query Received : 6-Feb-23
Query Response : 6-Feb-23
Response Acknoweledgement : 7-Feb-23  

Note: The query was twofold:

Q1 - There was a listed executor that we forgot to mention has pre-deceased - I confirmed that this was the case and gave the DOD

Q2 - There is a duplicate application in the system that needed cancellation - This is infuriating as the only reason it was there was when we were trying to start a previous application that the system kicked out at the point of payment and wouldn't let us back into - I confirmed that this application could be cancelled

"Dear Mr #,

Thank you for your email, we have now updated the information provided to your case.

Many Thanks,

####

CTSC Support Officer | Probate Team  

CTSC Birmingham| Tel: 0300 303 0648"

Oh no you didn't!

After wainting for the 16 weeks to tick by I had two attempts to get into the queue for assistance. The first attempt cut off after 16 minutes and the seconf was answered after 24 minutes. The pre-recorded messages keep talking about "8 weeks" which is confusing.

The very first question I was asked "has it been over 16 weeks?"

So we go through all the details and I find out that only one of the the queries that we had replied to had actually been actioned, despite the email reply above. It took nearly 15 minutes (apologies to everyone else in the queue) to get that done and a confirmation that all was now OK, it had been escalated and that it was now "wait for 3 weeks"

Fingers crossed and best of luck to everyone

Regards

Tet

uknick

junebaby said:

We are now at 26 weeks and it’s driving me crazy. 

They wanted more information and asked for the email address and phone number of one of the witnesses. It took them 17 weeks before they asked for this. They say they sent an email to the witness which never arrived. If I hadn’t been chasing it we would never have known. I asked if they could resend it and the answer was no it had to go on the spreadsheet to be actioned. 

In the end, unbeknown to us, they posted out a witness statement. This then went back to Harlow and sat in the queue again to be scanned which took another 3 weeks. 

I asked my MP to get involved and he wrote to them 2 weeks ago and still nothing. 

Today I chased again and was told it couldn’t be escalated until next week as I was only on week 2 of the 3 week escalation cycle. It has already been escalated 3 times. 

Will probation ever be granted!!

Out of interest why did they want to talk to the witnesses?

junebaby

They queried the will because it wasn’t bound and was on single sheets. 

They actually attached the will to the witness statement and asked them to confirm that it was what they had put their signature to. 

In my opinion they could have requested this information at the scanning stage. Not 17 weeks later and only after I had chased it. 

BooJewels

What an odd question for them to ask  @junebaby - the witness is signing to say that they've witnessed the testator signing it in front of them on the day stated, not the content of the document or how many pages it had, was it stapled etc.

As I understand it, the posted Wills and other documents are initially received at an external company who scan it for the HMCTS service - so at that stage, they wouldn't perhaps have any authority to contact anyone, their role is just to make a digital copy of the received documents - it wouldn't be scrutinised until someone at HMCTS opened the file to review it.  So irritating though it is, that as such doesn't surprise me.  Maybe if they had any sense, they would tick a box somewhere at the scanning stage to flag up any documents that didn't meet expected criteria, allowing it to be manually checked earlier in the process.  But that would require the application of common sense.

I read a report somewhere in my reading about probate that this external company [when first engaged to supposedly speed up the process] didn't know that some documents were double sided and were only scanning one side of pages, until it was queried where all the missing pages were.   You really couldn't make all this stuff up.

sheffix2

When does the 16 weeks wait start from? Is it the date you applied online for Probate? Or is it the date they acknowledge receipt of the Will via email? Or some other start day I'm unaware of?
And do they ever update the online progress indicator which still is stuck on application received despite them acknowledging documents received? 
Thanks for help.

Jowwie

I started chasing exactly 16 weeks from when I applied. Let them tell you if it is not yet time.

The online progress does update, but I think only when HMCTS start doing something. If you are still sat in the queue then nothing happens even if the documents are scanned ready for HMCTS to look at.