Probate - how long?

JDacs23

21 weeks and the grant has been approved finally! 

pjs493

It's interesting to see how long it is taking for some people and some of the reasons for hold ups. My application should be straightforward so I'm hopeful that it won't take too long.

My current timeline is:

27 Nov 23 I applied as sole executor of my late husband's will.

11 Dec 23 documents were signed for (as per Royal Mail tracking service)

15 Dec 23 HMCTS sent an email to acknowledge receipt of the will and death certificate. They obviously have a few days delay between receiving and actually processing to acknowledge receipt of documents.

It's currently showing as awaiting a caseworker when I sign in online.

Hopefully I will receive the Grant of Probate before the 16 weeks (which would be 5 Apr 24 from the day they acknowledged receipt of the documents). I'm particularly keen to pay off the mortgage on a flat my husband bought before we married to avoid the interest that is accruing. I'm making the maximum overpayments without incurring charges, but will have to pay exit fees if I pay it off before sending off the Grant.

The only hold up that I could potentially envisage is that my late husband's will was made a few months before we got married. We had mirror wills and both stipulated in our wills that we did not wish for the wills to be revoked upon our impending marriage. Because we married after we wrote our wills I have been informed that HMCTS could consider that he died intestate, despite the clauses we added, which could complicate things. But so far I haven't ran into any problems with banks, mortgage company, pensions, etc. His will leaves everything to me barring a couple of sentimental items and a charitable donation, so ruling his will as invalid due to our marriage won't change who inherits anything other than these small sentimental items and the donation. So hopefully when it reaches a caseworker this won't cause them to pause the application.

It would be interesting to know if anyone has had any problems due to a will being written shortly before a marriage and having a similar clause to what we wrote into our wills.

SnowMan

The November 2023 HMCTS statistics of probate application numbers and average waits for grants are out today

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

Here is some of that data of average wait times in table format. 

'Not stopped' wait times have reduced for both digital and paper applications. 

But 'stopped' application wait times have increased. 

Overall wait times ('stopped' and 'not stopped' combined) for both digital and paper applications have increased. Although these absolute wait times remain shocking, the increasing wait time since October reflects that they have been working on older cases in November rather than indicating a further deteriorating position.

SnowMan

And here are the mean wait times since 2020 shown in chart form. The red lines are digital applications, the blue lines are paper applications and the green line is all applications combined.

SnowMan

The good news, in an overall bleak situation, is that for the third month running more grants were issued than were submitted. This is my chart estimating how many probate applications are in the system i.e. they have been submitted but await the grant. This would indicate that we would expect the average wait times to come down a bit in the next 3 months. It's going to take a long time to clear the backlog though and meaningfully reduce wait times to sensible waits.

(edit: updated chart added as new information has become available to allow better estimates of numbers)

Nearlyold

pjs493 said:

It's interesting to see how long it is taking for some people and some of the reasons for hold ups. My application should be straightforward so I'm hopeful that it won't take too long.

My current timeline is:

27 Nov 23 I applied as sole executor of my late husband's will.

11 Dec 23 documents were signed for (as per Royal Mail tracking service)

15 Dec 23 HMCTS sent an email to acknowledge receipt of the will and death certificate. They obviously have a few days delay between receiving and actually processing to acknowledge receipt of documents.

It's currently showing as awaiting a caseworker when I sign in online.

Hopefully I will receive the Grant of Probate before the 16 weeks (which would be 5 Apr 24 from the day they acknowledged receipt of the documents). I'm particularly keen to pay off the mortgage on a flat my husband bought before we married to avoid the interest that is accruing. I'm making the maximum overpayments without incurring charges, but will have to pay exit fees if I pay it off before sending off the Grant.

The only hold up that I could potentially envisage is that my late husband's will was made a few months before we got married. We had mirror wills and both stipulated in our wills that we did not wish for the wills to be revoked upon our impending marriage. Because we married after we wrote our wills I have been informed that HMCTS could consider that he died intestate, despite the clauses we added, which could complicate things. But so far I haven't ran into any problems with banks, mortgage company, pensions, etc. His will leaves everything to me barring a couple of sentimental items and a charitable donation, so ruling his will as invalid due to our marriage won't change who inherits anything other than these small sentimental items and the donation. So hopefully when it reaches a caseworker this won't cause them to pause the application.

It would be interesting to know if anyone has had any problems due to a will being written shortly before a marriage and having a similar clause to what we wrote into our wills.

If you made your wills in "Contemplation of Marriage" and the wills make this clear then there should be no issues with the validity of the wills. Plenty of articles available to hopefully put your mind at rest by Googling "Wills in Contemplation of Marriage"

pjs493

Nearlyold said:

It would be interesting to know if anyone has had any problems due to a will being written shortly before a marriage and having a similar clause to what we wrote into our wills.

If you made your wills in "Contemplation of Marriage" and the wills make this clear then there should be no issues with the validity of the wills. Plenty of articles available to hopefully put your mind at rest by Googling "Wills in Contemplation of Marriage"

Thanks for the tip, having Googled as you suggested it seems the solicitor we used was well aware of this and that is why we were advised to have the clause added. It was his employer in relation to his workplace pension that mentioned that he could be considered as dying intestate but that most institutions would likely go along with his wishes in his will because there was nothing particularly odd or out of the ordinary about his wishes, particularly as he was naming his (soon to be at the time) spouse as the main beneficiary of his estate.

We married five months after making our wills so that probably meets the 'marry within a reasonable time' after the wills are made comment that crops up in many of the articles. We did intend to make new wills once we married but just never got around to it. My husband's death was unexpected so we didn't really feel there was much urgency given that we already had wills. We kept talking about doing it, especially after our first child was born as once we had children it simplified our wills even further because we could cut out lots of other clauses such as 'if that gifts fails... and if that gift fails...', but just never got around to it. Our wills were both written with the expectation that we would have children.

My chief concern now is making a new will (which I'm in the process of doing), particularly so that the children are well looked after (and go to the right people) in case anything unexpected happens to me.

SnowMan

Question in parliament on the ongoing probate delays on 9th January.

Not sure where the 8,000 figure comes from of grants issued over new applications over the past two months. It was 3,428 for October and 4,578 for November. So don't be fooled by the 8,000 excess figure, it's not 8,000 per month excess but 8,000 excess in total over two months so 4,000 excess per month. At that rate the backlog isn't going to be cleared for at least 18 months. So much more misery for probate applicants who want to be able to move on.

And also disappointing that the Under Secretary of State for justice quotes times from when documents are scanned in rather than from when probate applications are submitted, the latter is of course what matters to most applicants and across paper and digital applications that's almost 16 weeks not 12 weeks. And of course for those having to fill in the full inheritance tax forms you can add on a further 4 weeks that you are supposed to wait before you can submit the probate application in the first place.  

dkay5701

I have had quite a positive experience with my probate application as I was expecting to waiting until March at the earliest.

20/11/23 - Online application submitted.
29/11/23 - Confirmation documents received
14/01/24 - Email saying probate granted and docs to arrive in 10 days.

Mum's estate was below the inheritance tax threshold.

SnowMan

dkay5701 said:

I have had quite a positive experience with my probate application as I was expecting to waiting until March at the earliest.

20/11/23 - Online application submitted.
29/11/23 - Confirmation documents received
14/01/24 - Email saying probate granted and docs to arrive in 10 days.

Mum's estate was below the inheritance tax threshold.

Interesting. That's just under 8 weeks which compares with a mean time of 9.9 weeks for digital applications that weren't stopped in November.