How long does probate take in 2026, and what slows it down (UK)

30 August 2026 · Inherit Vault

The official line is twelve weeks. The government's own figures put the average nearer five. And yet estates still routinely take a year to wind up, because the grant is only one step in a much longer queue.

The headline number, and what it actually measures

The Ministry of Justice publishes probate timings every quarter. For January to March 2026, probate grants took around 5 weeks on average from submission to issue, with a median of 1 week. That gap is the whole story. Most applications sail through almost immediately, and a minority sit for months and drag the average up. GOV.UK still says you'll "usually get probate within 12 weeks", which is the safe promise rather than the typical experience. If you're not sure what the grant is even for, start here.

No will, or no named executor? Add weeks

Not every grant is a grant of probate. In that same quarter, letters of administration with a will annexed took around 20 weeks, and letters of administration where there was no will took around 11. Probate grants, the straightforward kind where a valid will names an executor who can act, made up 80% of the 81,069 applications. So the single biggest factor in your wait was decided years ago by the person who died. If they left nothing, the intestacy rules pick your heirs for you, and the paperwork takes longer too.

The clock starts long before you apply

None of those court figures cover the first stretch. You register the death, hunt down the will, then write to every bank, provider, pension scheme and insurer for a date-of-death balance. Some reply within days. Some take a month and then ask for a document you already sent. Meanwhile the accounts are frozen and the direct debits are bouncing. Two or three months can disappear here before an application is even started, and none of it shows up in the statistics.

Inheritance tax is the big one

If the estate isn't an "excepted estate", you have to send HMRC the full picture on form IHT400 before you can apply at all. Then you wait 20 working days for HMRC to send a letter or email containing a unique code. No code, no application. On top of that, inheritance tax is due by the end of the sixth month after the death, and HMRC charges interest after that. It's a genuine catch: the money to pay the tax is usually sitting in the accounts the grant is supposed to unlock. There are ways round it, but none of them are quick.

Stopped applications, the real time thief

When something's missing, HMCTS "stops" the application and it waits for you. Its own list of the usual causes: supporting documents missing, applications sent in too soon after the HMRC forms, executors unaccounted for, and queries about the condition of the will. That last one catches people out. A staple hole, a pin mark or a torn corner suggests something was once attached, so the registry asks what it was. A stopped application takes more than double the administrative time to issue, and every round trip adds weeks.

The two waits your executor should actually take

Some of the delay is deliberate, and sensible. Under section 27 of the Trustee Act 1925, executors can advertise in The Gazette for unknown creditors, giving them a period of not less than two months to come forward. Separately, anyone bringing a claim under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975 has six months from the date the grant is issued. Hand out the money before those windows shut and your executor can be personally on the hook. That's a large part of why executors are told to wait.

Then there's the house

Once the grant is in hand, property sets the pace. Valuation, marketing, finding a buyer, a chain, conveyancing. Six months from grant to completion is ordinary, and longer if the market's flat or the title turns out to be messy. When you hear that an estate "took eighteen months", the house is usually the reason, not the court.

What it costs while you're waiting

The application fee is £526 if the estate is worth more than £5,000, and nothing at all if it's £5,000 or less. Copies of the grant cost £2 each if you order them with the application, and £16 each if you ask later. Order more than you think you need. Sending copies to ten organisations at once, rather than posting one around in a slow circle, genuinely saves weeks.

Scotland and Northern Ireland run their own systems

Those figures cover England and Wales. In Scotland the equivalent is "confirmation", applied for through the sheriff court, with its own forms, its own inventory and its own timescales. Northern Ireland has its own probate office. If the estate has assets on both sides of a border, expect two processes running at different speeds, not one.

How to actually make it faster

Apply online: 93% of applications now are, and 94% of grants are issued digitally, so paper is the slow lane. Order plenty of death certificate copies when you register. Keep the original will flat, unmarked and unstapled. Send every supporting document with the application rather than after it. Get the tax figures right first time. And know what the estate actually holds before you start, which is the one thing no form will tell you.

Here's the uncomfortable part. The court is now the fast bit of probate: five weeks, mostly digital, mostly uneventful. What burns the months is the hunting. Which bank, which pension, which insurer, which old share certificate, which crypto exchange, and where on earth the will is kept. That part is entirely within your control today, and it takes an afternoon. A plain record of your accounts, policies, providers and paperwork is the difference between your executor's year and your executor's fortnight.

Leave your family a map, not a mystery.

Inherit Vault is a digital inheritance vault: every account, policy, and instruction your family will need, encrypted so only you can read it, released to your executor when it genuinely matters.

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