How Long Should it Take to Obtain Grant of Probate?

So How Long Should it Take to Obtain Grant of Probate, well if you are an Executor of a Will or a Representative of a deceased person’s estate (if there is no Will), you will need to establish whether a Grant of Probate is required for the estate.

Generally speaking, if a deceased person owns property in their sole name or as a “Tenant in Common” with another person; or

If they have significant savings (approximately £25,000 plus) in one bank account/Personal Equity Plan (PEP)/Individual Savings Account (ISA) or Premium Bond holding; or

If they hold more than approximately £10,000 in one shareholding, then the Executor of their Will or the Representative of their estate must obtain permission from a government department, known as the Probate Registry, before the estate can be distributed to the beneficiaries of the Will or the beneficiaries by law if there is no Will.

This permission is known as a “Grant of Probate”.

It is a myth that you must use a solicitor firm to obtain a Grant of Probate, and this is an extremely expensive and unnecessary route to take. It is not uncommon to pay over £6,000 to a solicitor to obtain a Grant of Probate, and so-called “legal services” firms often charge even more than this. To justify such high fees, it is commonplace for a lot of solicitor and legal services firms to take 9 months or longer to obtain a Grant of Probate on behalf of an Executor or Representative so that the expensive fee they have charged appears to be more justifiable.

However, provided an estate is not extremely complex and the application for Grant of Probate is completed properly, the process rarely takes longer than 3 months to complete. As a result, there is more money which remains within the estate for distribution to beneficiaries, and those beneficiaries receive their inheritance much sooner.

Some Executors or Representatives are confident enough to apply for Grant of Probate directly to the Probate Registry. However, if Executors or Representatives are not confident to apply to the Probate Registry directly, they need not spend more than £1,000 to obtain the same outcome, merely by carrying out some worthwhile research and using a guidance service which is priced much more competitively.

Please visit our Probate page for further details.