Probate - how long?

Mikey_JB

ax84mdy84 said:

Has anyone ever been successful with the web chat? Whenever I try, it's always:

All our advisors are busy. Try again in a few minutes.

Hi.    I managed to get through on the Web Chat a few weeks ago, although I had to press "refresh" every few seconds for about twenty minutes.   

I believe the Probate Office are lowering the numbers of people on phones and web chats in order to focus on processing applications, which while frustrating is probably a good thing in the long run...

GoogleMeNow

Mikey_JB said:

ax84mdy84 said:

Has anyone ever been successful with the web chat? Whenever I try, it's always:

All our advisors are busy. Try again in a few minutes.

Hi.    I managed to get through on the Web Chat a few weeks ago, although I had to press "refresh" every few seconds for about twenty minutes.   

I believe the Probate Office are lowering the numbers of people on phones and web chats in order to focus on processing applications, which while frustrating is probably a good thing in the long run...

Yes, that's my impression.   The phone lines close at 1pm now, so less time to get through to them.  Phone calls from applicants do interrupt their work, which in turn delay the processing, but if their website was a little more informative about where you are in the process or what exact additional evidence they need, it wouldn't be so frustrating.  I only started phoning them after 16 weeks, because they ignore emails and the website didn't answer my query.

ProbateNewbie

I got through on the phone within about 20 mins a few weeks ago. He couldn't really answer my question though. 🫤

I was most surprised to have an email conversation with Land Registry on a Saturday morning!! Didn't expect them to be working on a Saturday.

ax84mdy84

I was losing hope, my emails were being ignored...

Then today, I received an email that probate had been granted! 

Took almost 28 weeks. I now wait for it to arrive in the post. What could go wrong?

SnowMan

First oral hearing in the Parliamentary enquiry into the Probate Registry delays and quality issues this afternoon has just ended. You can watch it via this link

https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/9c79faa9-bce2-404e-af48-9730ccdb2a4c

Skim watched it. Really bizarre session where some charity representatives were giving evidence on the effect on them. As more people have been dying the effect on charities in relation to the level of legacy income should be quite minimal, and having listened in, that's still my view. The number of grants issued hasn't really gone down over time, it's just that the probate registry have taken no action to deal with increased applications allowing a substantial backlog to build up unaddressed. Essentially the charities should be getting more legacies because more people are dying. The delays will have some affect in that the charities won't see the immediate benefit of those extra legacies because probate is taking 3 months longer than it should do on average. But the charities were claiming that the Probate Registry delays were causing them big issues with their planning.

The bereaved on the other hand who are trying to move on after the death of a loved one but can't and can't sell properties etc are the real victims here. And all the quality issues at the Probate Registry affect the bereaved and those legal representatives applying on their behalf and don't really affect charities at all. The charity representatives pretty much refused to criticise the Probate Registry because they didn't want to damage their relationship with them.

Individual charities don't have any contact with the Probate Registry in relation to individual cases; it appears they find out from executors or for charities who have subscribed by checking all publicly lodged wills resulting from probate through a third party service (operated by Smee and Ford).

In Scotland it appears there was a system whereby the charity were similarly informed by Smee and Ford when a lodged will through a probate application named them. This system ended in 2020 and legacies have gone down since. The implication was that the executors were in some cases not passing on legacies to charities named in the will. To me that seems a serious accusation with real affects on charities, and this seemed to be the only material point that came up in the entire session.

Another question asked about the threshold for when an estate has to apply for probate which hasn't changed for some time supposedly. I wasn't aware there was a threshold even though the discussion carried on as if there was one. Individual institutions set their own monetary limits, and property ownership can mean probate is required. Then one of the committee seemed to mix it up with the £5,000 estate figure under which no probate fee is payable.

Overall a very poor quality session and the charity representatives seemed clueless about all manner of things in my view.

spaslet

Our experience has been very positive. We applied on line on 2nd February 2024. Receipt of the will was acknowledged on 19th February. Today I have received an email confirming that probate has been granted. All the IHT stuff had been lodged in mid January and the will is straightforward but I am impressed (and relieved ).

SnowMan

The January HMCTS data is out. Here is a table I've created from the data. Average wait times overall have increased slightly since December. The overall digital figure is unchanged so this increase is because of an increase in the overall paper wait times.

SnowMan

Here are the average wait times over time for digital/paper, stopped/non stopped grants issued up to January 2024 in chart form

SnowMan

Again more grants were issued in January 2024 than new applications for grants were received. So we shouldn't read too much into the slightly increased wait times from December 2023 to January 2024. See the attached chart I've produced from the data. Note the fall is due to falling number of outstanding digital applications; the number of outstanding paper applications is very slightly higher than at December.

Some of the reports on this thread suggest some much shorter wait times for non-stopped applications in March 2024, so hopefully we will see outstanding numbers decreasing although because of the data lag we will have to wait to see this confirmed in the data published in a few months time.

SnowMan

Google seems to have picked up some official data on the older cases (in a spreadsheet 'probate ad hoc tables' if you want to search for it). Looks like the number of older cases (over 6 months since application) has been increasing since November. See this chart I've produced from that data. So the overall reduction in open cases has come at the expense of there being more older cases over 6 months which is not good.