Probate help

[Costacoffeeplease]

My mother in law died last summer and the solicitors applied for probate in early September. We’ve heard nothing since and the solicitors refuse to chase it up. The estate is straightforward with no inheritance tax due, is this a normal timescale at the moment?

It's taking forever at the moment. We applied in June and finally got it in December. But your lawyer should be chasing.

If you search here you can see if it's been granted yet: www.gov.uk/search-will-probate

Thank you

They are discouraging us from chasing and if we do, we can be holding for over half an hour. Which is probably why the solicitors won't chase.

They’ve said they’re unhelpful and they think it has the opposite effect if they chase.

Actually if you do get through they are very helpful but it is a lot of (chargeable) time to hang on.

Also the woman on the hold message has the most irritating depressing voice - drives us mad in the office when someone's holding for them.

Maybe you could chase them yourself?

We have tried that but they said they wouldn’t speak to us as although my husband and siblings are executors, it was the solicitor who applied for probate

Seems a normal timescale at the moment for probate, ours was uncomplicated and took 3 months in April

@Costacoffeeplease

We have tried that but they said they wouldn’t speak to us as although my husband and siblings are executors, it was the solicitor who applied for probate

Oh that's annoying. Sorry.

Current timescale for paper applications is about 12 weeks so should be through soon now

Thank you. Fingers crossed. We have a buyer for the property, who knew it was a probate case from the beginning but were ‘happy to wait’ but who are now putting pressure on us. I’m not sure what they expect us to do?

@Costacoffeeplease the whole process is a nightmare at the moment, every solicitor we have dealt with has been awfully slow!
Your buyers probably want it through before stamp duty holiday ends and now want it rushed, unfortunately nothing you can do!

It’s a retirement flat so not a huge amount of stamp duty to save. I assume the buyer is downsizing

Next week it will be 5 months since the probate application