Following on from an earlier meeting with the Probate Officer (see eZine article dated 25 January 2023) the Chair, Vice Chair and Secretary of the Probate, Administration and Trusts Committee had a follow-up meeting with the Probate Officer following her formal appointment to the position.

Regrettably, as practitioners will be well aware, failure rates remain stubbornly high and consequently delays in receiving grants continue to lengthen. The Probate Office has its traditional complement of staff, the most recent having joined in December.

The Committee representatives stressed the importance of re-opening the SEAT Office to solicitors, town agents and legal executives and will, through the Law Society, lobby the Courts Service and the Minister for Justice to increase the number of staff in the Probate Office to facilitate this.

Catching common errors

In the meantime, practitioners could play their part by:

1. using their District Probate Registry – apart from reducing the burden on the Probate Office, it helps to ensure that these offices stay open;
2. double and treble checking their applications for clerical errors and inconsistencies – in particular the name and address of the deceased and the applicant should be consistent across the will (if any), the death certificate, the SA.2, the Notice of Application and the Oath (and Bond if any). Any differences should be accounted for;
3. ensuring that their Oath (and Bond if any) is sworn correctly. Incorrectly executed Jurats are still the reason why a significant number of applications are rejected; and
4. when completing the Bond, there is no need to include the name(s) of the applicant(s) or any figures.

The probate checklists, which can be found in the OUP Wills, Probate & Estates Manual, detail the most common errors for each type of application. The Committee would urge solicitors to download and / or print these checklists and double check any applications against the checklist before lodgement.