Are you or your family experiencing lengthy delays in receiving probate in England and Wales? Probate is the legal right to deal with someone’s estate. Read more about what probate is.

Many people are experiencing significant delays at the moment, particularly for paper (not online) applications. It is also a struggle to get through to the probate registry.

Being put on hold for 45 minutes to an hour is not unusual. The system is causing grieving families immense frustration. They do not need the added distress caused by these delays.

People can take steps now to avoid leaving their loved ones waiting for months for funds to come through. These include:

1) Nominating who should receive your insurance policies or death benefit payments

This makes it clear who should receive those funds. Probate is not needed, because the insurance company pays the nominated person directly. This would give a grieving family a helpful and immediate source of money to pay their mortgage or other urgent bills.

2) Have a joint bank account

When a person dies, banks will freeze their sole accounts. Although dividends or rent are paid into the account, family members cannot access those funds until probate is granted.

A joint bank account is one way around that, because it is not frozen when one of the account holders dies. This could help a family while they are waiting for probate. These are the kinds of conversations people should be having before it is too late.

Jo Summers TEP, Partner, Jurit