Stopped Probate Applications Take Seven Times Longer to Clear, Maximum Inheritance Warns Families
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Wallington, Surrey, United Kingdom – 13th August, 2026 – Maximum Inheritance, a UK estate planning firm operating since 1999, is urging families to give far more attention to getting a probate application right the first time, after official figures showed that applications which get stopped take seven times longer to clear than those that do not.
According to the Family Court Statistics Quarterly bulletin for January to March 2026, published by the Ministry of Justice, probate grants that were stopped during the quarter took 14 weeks on average to be issued, compared with 2 weeks for those that were not stopped.
The figures show that the probate service itself is working quickly for most families. Of the 62,261 probate grants issued in the quarter, 94% were issued digitally, and digital applications that were not stopped, which made up 70% of all probate grants issued, took approximately 2 weeks from submission to grant. From the point where the documents were received, those grants took less than a week.
“Families brace themselves for a long wait, and then the wait turns out to come from somewhere else entirely,” said Ade Oduyemi, probate and inheritance tax specialist at Maximum Inheritance. “If the application is right, you are looking at a fortnight. The other twelve weeks are what it costs when an application gets stopped, and a good part of that, in my experience, is something somebody could have caught before it went in.”
An application can be stopped where there is a dispute about who is entitled to apply, where there are issues with a will or proposed will, or where an error is identified and further information requested. Each of those sends the application back for correction while the estate sits untouched.
The route the family takes also carries a cost in time. Across all grants issued in the quarter, the mean time from submission to grant was 5 weeks, with a median of 1 week. Where there is no will, letters of administration averaged 11 weeks. Letters of administration with a will annexed, which arise where a will exists but no executor is able or willing to act, averaged 20 weeks.
“That gap is the strongest argument for making a will that I can give anybody, and it has nothing to do with tax,” Oduyemi added. “Dying without one roughly doubles the average wait, and the family carrying that wait had no say in it. The person who could have prevented it was the one who never got round to the will.”
Pressure on the service is building. Open probate cases stood at 42,490 at the end of March 2026, up 19% from 35,740 a year earlier, though 78% of that open caseload had been open for less than six months.
The workload facing executors is also about to grow. From 6 April 2027, most unused pension funds and pension death benefits come within the value of the estate for inheritance tax purposes, under changes made by the Finance Act 2026. HMRC’s technical note on the reform, updated on 29 May 2026, requires pension scheme administrators to share information and respond to notices before the grant is issued, reversing the current position where a scheme usually asks to see the grant first. Where an executor requests a valuation, the scheme must provide an estimated value if it cannot supply an open market valuation within 28 days.
Executors will also need to understand two new instruments: a withholding notice, which stops a scheme paying out death benefits while the tax position is resolved, and a payment notice, which directs the scheme to pay the inheritance tax due directly to HMRC.
“From 2027 there is a whole extra job sitting on top of an application that already gets stopped often enough as it is,” Oduyemi said. “An executor is dealing with a pension provider before they even hold the grant, and every additional figure that has to be obtained and reported correctly is another thing that can go wrong.”
Maximum Inheritance works to fixed fees, published in advance, at £1,880 for full estate administration, with the price agreed before any work begins rather than billed by the hour.
Maximum Inheritance provides probate assistance to families across England and Wales, alongside estate planning and inheritance tax planning services. The firm operates on a personal basis, with Ade as the named specialist handling client matters directly rather than through a call centre, and publishes its probate costs openly.
Families dealing with an estate, or executors who want to understand what the process will require of them, can arrange a consultation at a time that suits them by visiting www.max-inheritance.co.uk.
About Maximum Inheritance
Maximum Inheritance is a UK estate planning firm based in Wallington, Surrey, established in 1999. The firm specialises in estate planning, inheritance tax planning and probate assistance for families across England and Wales, working to fixed fees that are published in advance rather than hourly rates or a percentage of the estate. It is led by Ade Oduyemi, an estate planning and inheritance tax specialist who handles client matters personally rather than through a call centre. Its mission is to help families keep more of what they have built, by making the cost of expert help clear from the outset and preventing avoidable tax and administration losses.
Media Contact
Company Name: Maximum Inheritance
Contact Person: Ade Oduyemi
Email: Send Email
Phone: 02086691779
Address:18, Salisbury House 8 Melbourne Road
City: Wallington
State: Greater London SM6 8SA
Country: United Kingdom
Website: https://www.max-inheritance.co.uk
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