Probate - how long?

bob_a_builder

Excepted case, POSTAL application
Tracked arrival at HMCTS on the 19th Nov
Email confirming grant received on the 17th Dec

richardw

Bink1942 said:

....we had to wait for 2 months to get a statement from NS&I about his Premium Bonds, so this set us back 2 months, not sure whether the Solicitor was at fault or NS&I, as when i chased up the delay with the Solicitor, the Statement arrived a week later!! (probably passed the job onto a junior, who forgot to speak to NS&I)....

I'm a bit concerned about NS&I.
I just want balances at this stage for the IHT calculation.
I hope it won't take 2 months.

purplepardalis

FYI for anyone. IHT forms should be sent tracked but not signed for. I lost a whole month and had to resend. My original set of forms and death certificate are goodness knows where! 
I received my confirmation of payment of IHT and unique code yesterday within the time frame and can now apply for probate.

I am now nervous of the original will disappearing in the postal system - Will do tracked only again this time

Snot

purplepardalis said:

FYI for anyone. IHT forms should be sent tracked but not signed for. I lost a whole month and had to resend. My original set of forms and death certificate are goodness knows where! 
I received my confirmation of payment of IHT and unique code yesterday within the time frame and can now apply for probate.

I am now nervous of the original will disappearing in the postal system - Will do tracked only again this time

purplepardalis, you had me worried when I first read your post about not using tracked, but my experience has been seamless to far.

I sent the IHT400 plus all the addon forms by '48hrs Tracked & Signed', it was shown as delivered 3 days later. From posting to receiving the Probate Code was 20 days, this included the Christmas and NY holidays.

Sent the Will to the Probate office by Special Delivery and 4 days later got an email to say the Grant had been approved.

purplepardalis

Snot said:

purplepardalis said:

FYI for anyone. IHT forms should be sent tracked but not signed for. I lost a whole month and had to resend. My original set of forms and death certificate are goodness knows where! 
I received my confirmation of payment of IHT and unique code yesterday within the time frame and can now apply for probate.

I am now nervous of the original will disappearing in the postal system - Will do tracked only again this time

purplepardalis, you had me worried when I first read your post about not using tracked, but my experience has been seamless to far.

I sent the IHT400 plus all the addon forms by '48hrs Tracked & Signed', it was shown as delivered 3 days later. From posting to receiving the Probate Code was 20 days, this included the Christmas and NY holidays.

Sent the Will to the Probate office by Special Delivery and 4 days later got an email to say the Grant had been approved.

Glad yours got there! My first lot are still out there somewhere. Goodness knows.

When I called they said sometimes they have problems with signed for, obviously not always the case 

I also sent the will to probate special delivery - that was all fine and I also got approval within a couple of days.

SnowMan

I've not posted up monthly HMCTS figures for a while, but here are the HMCTS February probate wait times. The table has been created by me from the data. The monthly update data is published on the second Thursday of each month, so the next HMCTS update will be the March data which comes out in May.

Overall (digital and paper combined) there were 26,674 applications received in February and 25,789 grants issued (so almost 1K more received than issued). The overall average wait time is 6.4 weeks. But the overall average wait time for paper cases has been creeping up and is now 16.5 weeks; there were 4,774 paper applications received in February which was more than the 3,817 grants issued.

Variations between consecutive months can be as a result of differences in which cases HMCTS have been working on. Note these are mean (average) figures and there can be considerable variation from the mean in individual cases even within categories. For example the mean time for digital stopped applications is currently 11.8 weeks but the time for an individual digital stopped case may vary considerably from this figure.

SnowMan

And here is my chart from that data of the average wait times over time for digital/paper, stopped/non stopped grants issued up to February 2026.