Rather than advise on technical issues, we thought this month that we would report some good news.

The Probate office have finally got their act together and instead of the advertised 16 weeks we are seeing much quicker timescales in many situations.

In complete astonishment, we managed to get a probate granted within 18 days of making an application.

We did hesitate in writing this article as we do not want all of our probate clients to phone us after three weeks demanding their grant, as we have no idea why it was turned around so quickly.

On average we think 8/10 weeks might be a more realistic figure. However, these timescales are only applicable where they are not being sent for review. We have one case, probably one of the simplest we have submitted sent for review. We received an email saying, “please answer the questions below – it has been passed for review”. There were no questions attached. Apparently, this message was because it is the only way that the Probate office can contact us. We have heard nothing for some time.

A reminder that if form IHT400 has to be submitted to HM Revenue & Customs before applying for Probate the progress is longer. An IHT400 is used if Inheritance Tax is payable or if certain taxation reliefs are claimed.

The old system was that once submitting the IHT400 you had to wait four weeks before applying for Probate review but now, before we can apply for Probate, HM Revenue & Customs have to send us an activation code. They will not do this until the Inheritance Tax is paid or the form checked. The code is unlikely to be issued for 4 weeks. Generally, this is working but only if the Inheritance Tax is paid before HM Revenue & Customs look at the form. We are finding that if the tax is paid after HM Revenue & Customs have looked, they never look again and we are having to phone them to ask for the code. All very frustrating.

So as ever good news is tempered by the not so good news.

GH Probate is authorised by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales to provide non-contentious probate services. For more information, please phone Barry Jefferd or Jenna Boddington on 01480 426500 or go to www.ghprobate.co.uk.

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