Length of time for probate for death of a foreign domicile

SadCodeMan

Hi,

Does anyone have any recent experience of timings for probate when the person who died was domiciled abroad? (France in my case).

Just wondering really what sort of timeframe others have had so it might give me an idea.

I reached my 12 weeks just recently and called them. They have the file but all foreign domocile casess need go to an expert person apparantly. They said that it had still not been looked at at all yet unfortunately.

TIA

RAS

Snowman publishes recent timescales in the Probate - how long thread.

SadCodeMan

He does, (and it is very good!) but I think he is not able to break out foreign domocile cases is he? I think I only saw digital vs paper and 'stopped' vs 'not stopped'. 
I am guessing the MI they provide is quite limited for any other breakdown.

poseidon1

SadCodeMan said:

Hi,

Does anyone have any recent experience of timings for probate when the person who died was domiciled abroad? (France in my case).

Just wondering really what sort of timeframe others have had so it might give me an idea.

I reached my 12 weeks just recently and called them. They have the file but all foreign domocile casess need go to an expert person apparantly. They said that it had still not been looked at at all yet unfortunately.

TIA

Do you mean resident abroad or domiciled ( for IHT purposes) in France ( not the same tax concepts).

If you are claiming a UK born person has changed their tax domicile at birth, to a new permanent French domicile of choice ( where they then died) , the implication is  that all the overseas assets are excluded for IHT purposes, and only UK situs assets are reportable for probate purposes.

In this scenario, every case like this will require an individual domicile ruling after an extensive Q & A for HMRC to be satisfied its correct to exclude overseas assets, so there is no 'standard' turn around time.

The experts on domicile at HMRC IHT unit are now few and far between, whilst there has also  been changes to domicile and resident tax rules for deaths after 5 April 2025, so no doubt a bit of a queue.

SadCodeMan

I mean domiciled in France.

Actually, the IHT bit was fairly painless. Partly helped by the fact he had been paying French tax for so long and that UK tax authorities had already given him a 'code' for this. That only took 4 weeks or so.

The really slow bit seems to be the probate part (HMCTS). Just wondered if anyone else had any experience of their timeframes.

julian_sand

Hello @SadCodeMan,

I actually do have experience in a very similar circumstance. I had to join the forum just so that I could provide some perspective.

To provide the context for me:
- Me and my late wife both have French citizenship.
- We lived & worked in the UK for 6-7 years but moved back to France where she then passed away.
- She had established a will in France, using the standard process with a French notary.
- Her UK assets were limited to bank accounts (checking, savings, funds ISA), no IHT applied.

After her passing we dealt with the French side of the inheritence. Nothing special there, took 1-2 months with the notary. I then applied, using the (mandatory for this case) paper process, with HMCTS for probate in the UK.

I supplied:
- P1AP filled out
- IHT statement (indicating no IHT applied).
- Death certificate (+ English certified translation)
- Marriage certificate (+ English certified translation)
- French will (+ English certified translation)
- French Certificate of Inheritance, a.k.a "Acte de Notoriété" (+ English certified translation)

With that context set, and with the clear & explicit disclaimer that this is only reflecting my own experience, it has been anything but painless. It's rather been the most awful administrative experience I've ever had to deal with.

I applied in May 2023, received an acknowledgment of the application at the start of August 2023. To this date (September 2025) I still have no probate granted. My current best guess is that this may get resolved somewhere in early 2026... if I am lucky.

It took a year, many fruitless attempts at contact via email & telephone, and a formal complaint to get told that I was missing an official Seal on my notarial copy of the Will (disregarding the fact that the Certificate of Inheritence did have a Seal, from the same notary, and contained a copied statement of the Will's content.

After providing an updated version of the document I have spent another year, many more fruitless contact attempts, an unanswered formal complaint and finally a request for assistance with the MP for my constituency (I have since had the time to move back to the UK) to get another non-answer and non-sensical request for additional documentation.

At the moment I am running through the appeals part of the HMCTS complaints process. Based on the lack of responses in recent weeks I will likely again need to ask help from my MP's case team to move things forward even there. My plan is to put in a case with the PHSO once the HMCTS process completes.

Hence, as much as I sincerely hope that my case is an extreme outlier... be ready, in the worst-case scenario, for a very long and exhausting fight.

SadCodeMan

Thank you very much @julian_sand.

Though I would be lying if I said that the post made reasuring reading!

The only real takeaway I have at the moment (which chimes with some of what you say) is that it is all but impossible to comunicate with anyone actually at HMCTS.

They never answer any emails as far as I can see. Although you can get to talk to someone on the phone or over webchat, as far as I can see, they have next to no ability to do anything (though are very polite in their resposes saying there is nothing they are able to do).

I think that is sounds as if they are not even able to contact the 'actual' HMCTS staff. Broadly they can just read the status of the application which, in my case is still 'We recieved your application. It is in a queue for a specialist to see it'. As far as I can see, the only recourse if things get stuck is to try to involve an MP or similar after a period of waiting which seems too extreme. What a system!

IMHO they should reverse things to say that you dont need to pay IHT until *after* you get probate. The trajectory with IHT is that more an more money will be coming in there so that might give the government some incentive to resource and police the process more sensibly. (Sort of like the French process) 

My concern (also as per your post) is that I might not have given them quite the paperwork they need and will find that out only after a huge wait only to go to the back of the queue when I then send it... It does seem inexcusable not to have a triage process at the start to establish simple things like that.

I have a slightly different situation because my father had an English will (carving out only assets in UK) in addition to the French will which otherwise covered worldwide asssets so at least my application could be made with an English will (which named me as one of the Executors). To my mind that should make it quite straightforward as they have only UK assets (no property. Just bank and shares) being covered by a UK Will in English but I fear I am being much too optomistic there.

I am massively impresssed by your Notaire however. Ours seems very good but looks like they will take it much closer to the 6 months mark. At least they said this upfront however and have been fantastic with comunication and give no suggestion at all that they will not keep exactly to the time they predicted. A world away from HMCTS.

I have my fingers crossed that you beat your 2026 prediction. (And for me too!)

Thanks again.

julian_sand

Thank you very much @julian_sand.

Though I would be lying if I said that the post made reasuring reading!

You're welcome. Although I would very much have preferred to be able to provide you with a more reassuring perspective.

I'll add some more details below. Not to hijack your thread for my own purpose, but rather to provide you with insights in the hope that they will allow you to shortcut significant parts of the process.

The only real takeaway I have at the moment (which chimes with some of what you say) is that it is all but impossible to comunicate with anyone actually at HMCTS.

They never answer any emails as far as I can see. Although you can get to talk to someone on the phone or over webchat, as far as I can see, they have next to no ability to do anything (though are very polite in their resposes saying there is nothing they are able to do).

Email responses appear indeed to be a nonexistent thing, making me even wonder whether they have an internal policy to not ever answer anything in writing due to potential legal repercussions.

Across my 8 email exchanges over the past 2+ years, the two that I started were never answered, six others were started by HMCTS. Amongst the latter two were notifications of some sorts that did not require any reply on my end and the remaining four were followed by (near immediate, same-day, same-hour) replies / requests for clarification or updates from me that did not result in any follow-up from HMCTS.

As for the phone: out of the 8-10 calls I made over the same time frame, I received 5/6 times the response that they could indeed not provide any update as "the case lays with the Foreign Domicile team" (for which there is no contact information, nor are they able to pass you through to them internally). They did however each time, following an assumed script, stated that they had made a note on the file to escalate it to their manager and that I "should hear from HMCTS in the next 5-10 days. Given my first post you can already deduce that I've never heard anything following those calls.

Only on one occasion, early September 2024 did I get through to two actually helpful people. The first one put in a note directly for the Foreign Domicile team to take immediate action. My suspicion is that I had the fortunate chance to have dialled into a senior manager or exec who was temporarily co-manning the phone lines that day. This call resulted in an email a few hours later asking for two additional documents, to which I had unfortunately had to reply that I had already sent the very same documents over as part of my original application. I was able to verify this via another call where the person, at my direction, as able to confirm within minutes the presence of the documents in the digital version of my file. However my email reply to their request again went unanswered.

Conclusion: Neither email nor telephone are effective to move things forward. However you do need to try them regardless such that there are notes about those contacts attached to your file to show your proactiveness. This then allows you to go through the official HMCTS complaints process if things don't move for more than 2-3 months. Do leave an initial 6 months of grace period before starting this process. Processing times for unstopped paper applications are around 3-4 months and hence you can only reasonably expect an update after that time has expired.

I think that is sounds as if they are not even able to contact the 'actual' HMCTS staff. Broadly they can just read the status of the application which, in my case is still 'We recieved your application. It is in a queue for a specialist to see it'. As far as I can see, the only recourse if things get stuck is to try to involve an MP or similar after a period of waiting which seems too extreme. What a system!

In my case I put in a first formal complaint in early October 2024 after my above-mentioned email thread about missing documents went silent. This then resulted, within the stated 10-day response time, in another document request. This time related to the missing Seal on the otherwise notarized copy of the Will. As I had already stated that I could not provide the original Will document (which belonged to the notary's office official records) I also had to make a formal statement stating as much to get them to accept a copy. I was able to request the copy with an additional Seal from the notary and sent it over to HMCTS in early November 2024.

Simultaneously to the document request I also received a brief response to my complaint stating that the case "had now progressed", but no explanation as to why it had taken 14 months and an official complaint to get to that point, nor why, the month prior, I had been asked for documents that I had already provided. My best guess is that my complaint had landed with someone who took their job with at least a minimum amount of seriousness and actually pushed the process internally, even if the overall response was still severely lacking in detail or actual information.

When I had not recieved any updates by late January 2025 and multiple contact attempts had failed again to produce even a single sentence of information I then submitted a second formal complaint in late April 2025. I reiterated my requests for the probate to be granted now that all documents had been provided, I also reiterated my requests for a formal apology, some explanations as to the why of these astonishing delays and the total lack of responsiveness. Finally all accompanied with a demand for financial compensation in regards to the abhorrent handling of my case, the continued emotional stress and the financial loss related to my inability to administer the estate within a reasonable timeframe (the estate is in the low 6-digit figures and consists mostly of investments).

At the exact limit of the official 10-day response time for complaints, I was provided with a generic email stating that they "[needed] to fully investigate the details of [my] complaint and [they] therefore [required] more time to conduct a thorough investigation." They explicitly stated that no timeline could be provided for a response.

By mid-June 2025 I reached out to my local MP, requesting their assistance in the face of the stone wall of HMCTS. They got an initial response within a matter of days which stated that I would receive a reply shortly. No such thing happened. A month later I messaged the MP's case team again. They again received a reply within a day or two, stating that I should have a response by "close-of-play today". It took another 4-5 days before I received a message stating that my case had been referred to the Registrar (the expert person you mentioned in your very first post). But no further detail.

Another week later, at the end of August, I received a response to my second complaint. A response that I can only describe as laconic, with undertones of accusations of wasting HMCTS' time directed at myself and no actual responses, nor even mention of financial compensation. Without elaborating on the specifics, it suffices to say that, if I actually had the legal opportunity to sue the probate registry, my counsel would have a field day just on the basis of that reply.

Of course I have appealed, as per HMCTS's official process and promptly received an acknowledgment of the request. However their stated 10-day response limit for the appeal expired 2 weeks ago, and my email follow-up last week with a request for an estimate on when to expect an actual response has, as you can guess by now, only been met with silence.

Conclusion: Use the complaints process and push aggressively. Use your MP if you live in the UK, but if that's not the case and you are not getting any replies to your complaints go directly to the PHSO (see below) explaining the why of the shortcut as you normally need support from your MP to do so.

My concern (also as per your post) is that I might not have given them quite the paperwork they need and will find that out only after a huge wait only to go to the back of the queue when I then send it... It does seem inexcusable not to have a triage process at the start to establish simple things like that.

I have a slightly different situation because my father had an English will (carving out only assets in UK) in addition to the French will which otherwise covered worldwide asssets so at least my application could be made with an English will (which named me as one of the Executors). To my mind that should make it quite straightforward as they have only UK assets (no property. Just bank and shares) being covered by a UK Will in English but I fear I am being much too optomistic there.

If you provided a set of doucments similar to the one I gave in my previous post then I would not be worried about whether you need to provide additional paperwork. You should rather be worried about whether they will actually use all the documents correctly and not come back to you asking for things you've already provided.

Beyond the first request about "missing" documents that I was able to dismiss as incorrect, as related above, the latest development of a few weeks back in early September was that after the Registrar reviewed my case a second time (the first time it led to the request about the missing Seal) they now state that: As your wife died domiciled in France, we need to establish entitlement to the estate under the laws of France. As the Will does not appoint an executor we therefore require an affidavit / statement of truth of French Law to set out who would be beneficially entitled to the estate under that system of law. The Affidavit / Statement of Truth must set out how the person is qualified to give expert evidence of the law of France and include whether a minority of life interest arises under French law. In other words they want the Certificate of Inheritance that I already provided.

Given that you have an actual English Will, with you as the explicit Executor, this will not be a problem in your case. My best guess is that, due to all the delays which led to documents having been sent all over the country to different offices (as per the last complaint response), they forgot to reinclude that specific document in the file sent over to the Registrar for evaluation. They did likely sent it as part of the first Registrar evaluation, hence why this request did not come out of last year's document request alongside with the missing Seal on the Will.

I pointed out that I already provided that document in an email reply the next day, but as you can guess... that has for the last 4 weeks only been met with silence.

----

So what then? I am planning to run out the HMCTS appeals process. I will have to finish the first appeal cycle and the trigger the second one. I will be liberally pushing it all with help from my MP's case team. I have a very negative balance of confidence that the appeals process will produce anywhere near a satisfactory outcome, including appropriate financial compensation. Hence I will apply to the Parliamentary Health & Services Ombudsman (PHSO) as soon as I get a final reply (another 3-4 months I would guess). There is a public reference of a probate-related complaint with HMCTS that the PHSO handled last year and which was decided partly in favour of the complainant last year. Can't post a direct link given I'm new to the forum so:

1. Find the PHSO page and navigate to the top bar's "Decisions" page.
2. Search for a case targeting "HM Courts and Tribunals Service", decided on June 6th, 2024, in a complaint made by "Mr R about how HMCTS handled his application to reseal his mother’s probate and the way it handled his complaint."
3. The case ID in the URL you land on should be 0b3a5019-cd65-ef11-bfe2-002248421b75

Given the relatively benign details of that case, and in comparison with my own situation, I am relatively confident that my case would result in a similar partly, or even fully, upheld finding. The PHSO's publicly accessible guidelines on complaint handling, compensation benchmarks, etc also align very well with the requests that I had already formulated as part of my own (second) complaint on "how to put things right". ----

Other things to note:

• Over time I have consulted with several probate-specialist solicitors about whether they would be able to assist. All declined to intervene as they would "be facing the same wall of silence as [I was] facing" and "it would be a waste of [my] money". They did however share independently but unanimously over the phone that a 1-2 year delay without updates, meaningful exchanges with HMCTS, nor case progress was unheard of in their decades of combined career experience.
• If you don't have an MP (e.g. living abroad) my best guess is for you to go to PHSO directly once HMCTS has failed to reply to your complaint within a reasonable timeframe (and maybe one follow-up email on your side). I don't know if they will take up your case as a foreign-domiciled person, but it's better to try it at the very least.

SadCodeMan

Thank you once more for the very detailed reply.

I am very much hoping that I won't need to go down the route of an official complaint and that it will just all be fine if I wait sufficiently long but the information you give if I do end up there is fantastic.

Obvioulsy I wish you luck with, what I hope will be, the final stages.

I do take some comfort in the cmments from the probate specialist solicitors in your final para.

Thanks again.