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.

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

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.

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

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.

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...

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