Probate - how long will it take?

[Janetatone]

Has anyone been through probate recently? We put forms in 3 weeks ago and wondered how long it's taking at the moment. Straight forward probate and no IHT to pay.

[Howdoin]

Relative died in September, solicitors have advised anything up to 18 months!

[MinnieMountain]

My DM’s took 7 weeks after I put it in just before Christmas. I’d had to do a paper application and got warned it would take longer than 8 weeks as a result, so I was pleasantly surprised.

[Janetatone]

Ah that's good news. We did it ourselves because we know how long solicitors take to do it. Within the 7 weeks how long did it take for the IHT 421 to be sent to the probate office do you remember? We thought about 12 weeks for probate at the moment

[sneakysnoopysniper]

I was involved in an estate which took about 14 months as the solicitors had to advertise/search for potentially missing heirs! They have to get this right as if they miss anyone who later makes a claim they can take action not only against the solicitors but against the other beneficiaries for a share. Solicitors usually insure against this possibility but at a fairly late stage in their enquiries as this will affect the cost of said insurance.

It is possible to ask the solicitors to arrange an up-front partial disbursement in less complex cases - this happened when my surviving parent died and the estate was a fairly simple one with no "missing " heirs.

[Fleurchamp]

Depends - was it a paper application or online?
Was there a Will?
Any unusual circumstances - not all executors taking the grant? Issues with the Will? Anything extra adds on a couple of weeks at least.

Looks like you submitted an IHT400 - HMRC are currently saying leave 4 weeks between sending the IHT400 to them and sending the application to the Probate Registry (usually it is 3 weeks and I think it still says that online) as they email the IHT421 directly to them.

Sometimes HMRC will send you a letter saying they have sent the IHT421 to the probate registry and sometimes they don't.

I have had recent online applications back in 3 weeks and others in 17 weeks+. There seems to be no rhyme or reason for it.

The main issue/ hold up seems to be the delay between the probate registry receiving the documents, scanning them in, matching them to the IHT421 and allocating them to a team- from my online system (I am a solicitor) it looks like that takes around two weeks. If it works smoothly then it is fine but it is horrendous if something goes wrong (like a recent case of mine where they had failed to scan in one page of the Will correctly - it took 2 months to rectify).

I would call them in 3 weeks' time to check they have everything as I find that they will not contact you for ages to say there is something wrong/ missing.

Good luck! When I started out we used to get grants back within a week - 10 days. Those were the days...

[CMOTDibbler]

I did two last year - in May and June, and the first took 4 weeks, the second 2. For the first I did all the IHT online as it was a direct pass to spouse and you only had to provide the tracking number, the second I had to do all the paper IHT forms as using transfer of nil rate, and I expected it to take longer, but it could have been quick as it was the spouse and so they'd had everything before