Probate : 16 weeks and counting

onomatopoeia99

Will posted to complete the online application (by special delivery, or whatever it's called) 18th April, so Royal Mail confirmed it was received the following day.

Probate approved email received from HMCTS this morning, exactly seven weeks later.  I nearly fell out of my chair, I wasn't expecting anything until the middle of August at the earliest given all the 16 week plus stories here.

Bonniepurple

onomatopoeia99 said:

Will posted to complete the online application (by special delivery, or whatever it's called) 18th April, so Royal Mail confirmed it was received the following day.

Probate approved email received from HMCTS this morning, exactly seven weeks later.  I nearly fell out of my chair, I wasn't expecting anything until the middle of August at the earliest given all the 16 week plus stories here.

Wow!  Fingers crossed that my Dad’s Estate will be similarly speedy (applied 25th April).

oglop

tooldle said:

I don’t think the process is necessarily any slower with a solicitor. A lot depends on how large and complex the estate is and how many individual companies are involved. Even simple estates with perhaps a house and a couple of bank accounts can take a while if for example the house takes months to dispose of. 

Solicitors will juggle a number of cases as would be similar in many jobs. If this wasn’t the case, the solicitor would be charging a huge amount of money to cover all their costs. I think I’m right in saying the norm is to charge a percentage of the estate, unless negotiated otherwise.
I have a friend who is still trying to complete processing a parents estate. The end is not yet in sight and it has been rumbling on for 2.5yrs. In that case the executors are similar in age to the deceased and struggling. Friend has done a lot of the running around and chasing up on their behalf. There is a trust involved which adds some complexity and a large (very large) legal bill is being run up to resolve matters outside of the agency of the executors. Myself I think it key to chose a capable and appropriate executor at the outset.

I've been thinking of this comment as I currently deal with my useless solicitor. She received the funds from the unfrozen bank last week, when she was on holiday. This week, she said she'd try to arrange payment to me, but had some "more urgent" matters to deal with, so it may take a few days. I politely mentioned that this is, in fact, urgent to me. Well, she promised to have it sorted by this week, yet it's Friday already and her email is suddenly on auto-reply saying she'll get back to me when she's less busy. reeeeeee

There really is no point to my post other than to complain and whine. It's now been 45 weeks since the start of the probate process for me... I am so tired of being messed around

Edit: yes, she has confirmed that she's "too busy to deal with it right now", which just confirms my point of solicitors taking on more work than they can handle...  I'd be fired for saying something like that in my job - as would most other people, I imagine. And most other jobs don't have the luxury of charging hundreds of pounds per hour!

tooldle

Sometimes, no matter what the job, things happen all at once and a person has to choose which task takes precedence. Such circumstances happen often to me and to some of my colleagues. I’ve not been sacked neither have my colleagues. Such happenings are not because either of us are useless of incompetent, more because we don’t have control over the actions and timelines or availabilities of others. 

On a more positive note, the end is in sight for you by the sound of things. Solicitor confirms the funds are in, probably just the final checks to make before signing off for the payments team to action. 
My friend is still unfortunately waiting on progress.

oglop

In this case, things have been happening all at once constantly, apparently. That's the problem. It's been like this from the start. Unkept promises, unnecessary delays, errors on documents, often forgetting to follow up on things until I chase. In fact, if I didn't chase things up, I doubt anything would progress. I don't doubt the solicitor is busy -- probably too busy. She's probably been given X number of cases, which is too much to realistically handle, to maximise profits for her company. But that's not my problem. I'm paying for a service I'm barely getting.

Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be just me. Reviews in the past 6 months on TurstPilot have mostly pointed to the same thing in their probate division. 

But yes -- almost there. Although that should be been the case months ago. I hope your friend has more luck than me!

CharismaticMegafauna

I hope you get your funds soon oglop. 

We are still waiting for the Grant of Probate after 19.5 weeks. The application was escalated three weeks ago and we were told it would be looked at within three weeks. After the three weeks was up, they said it might be another three weeks. It's now with a team manager though I have no idea if that will speed things up at all. 

Jowwie

Latest performance stats are released. Probate is on the last tab. There is a big jump in the stats in April which fits with the lengthy delay we encountered on our straight forward application. Digital has gone from average of 8.2 weeks to 13.2 in a month.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/hmcts-management-information-april-2023

CharismaticMegafauna

@junebaby was your MP any help? I asked my MP if she could write to the probate office but she said she can't get involved as we have a solicitor handling the case. 

oglop

CharismaticMegafauna said:

I hope you get your funds soon oglop. 

We are still waiting for the Grant of Probate after 19.5 weeks. The application was escalated three weeks ago and we were told it would be looked at within three weeks. After the three weeks was up, they said it might be another three weeks. It's now with a team manager though I have no idea if that will speed things up at all. 

I will not get the funds soon. The latest incompetence from my solicitor (and bank) is her only just realising -- two weeks after receiving the funds from the bank -- that the bank sent the wrong final settlement, meaning (most likely) weeks more delays. Why this wasn't picked up when they received the funds, I don't know. How the bank could make this error, I don't know

My whole life is apparently waiting around for people who can't manage to do the basics of their job properly. 46 weeks and counting...

Rant over. I hope yours is granted soon. The whole thing just seems like a lottery 

junebaby

Our MP did write about 6 weeks before we got probate but I don’t think it made much difference. 

We were doing probate ourselves. I copied him into the emails I sent too.