New Grants - no sealed & certified copy Will for foreign assets

We have come across a potential problem in one of our estates, as we had requested a sealed and certified copy Will so that we can re-seal the Grant of Probate in order to deal with foreign assets. However, no such Will was provided to us (presumably as the new Grants are being issued without a copy Will attached either).

We have tried contacting the Probate Registry without success - there seems to be no point trying to phone them as you can’t get through to speak to someone, and no-one bothers to respond to e-mail queries either!

Has anyone applied to re-seal a Grant without a sealed & certified copy Will, or have any suggestions on how to proceed?

Thanks,

Rebecca Pryce
Equiniti

You need to write to the probate registry with £10 and ask for a sealed copy of the Will and grant. I did this last week and the copies arrived only a few days later. I was expecting a long wait
and was pleasantly surprised.

Good luck.

Caroline Brooks-Johnson
Inheritance Law

Thanks for your response, but I should have clarified that we requested the sealed and certified copy Will at the time we applied for Probate, so we shouldn’t need to send a further £10 for a copy. It’s just very frustrating that we can’t get through to speak to anyone on the phone!

Rebecca Pryce
Equiniti

I am replying to this email, as my own “new” emails to the TDF seem to go into the ether.

I read recently that the cost of office copy Grants (such as they now are) would be reduced to 25p with effect from 22 July. This was connected to the decision in relation to the will-reading service
for charities. Then there was a link in yesterday’s STEP UK News Digest to the new Probate Fees Order where it said that the cost of copy Grants would be £1.50 each. As Rebecca Pryce said, it is impossible to get through to the Probate Registries by telephone
now, so does anyone know what the true position is?

Cliona O’Tuama

Solicitor

I am actually replying to my own email!

By coincidence, just after I sent it I received an email from the Oxford DPR with a summary of the provisions of the new Court Fees Order relating to Probate fees. The fee for an office copy will
now be £1.50, whether it is the first copy requested or a subsequent copy.

Cliona O’Tuama

Solicitor

Having received a number of new version grants, I cannot tell the difference between the original grant and the office copy not that it matters.

On another point, recently I received a grant wherein It was stated that the gross estate amounted to £325,000 and the net estate £99,000. The actual figures in the IHT 205 were £109,000 and £98,028. A few days earlier I had received a Grant showing the correct figures from IHT 205. Obviously the property registry is no longer using the figures from the Statement of truth. I queried the matter with the probate registry and was told that they use the figures from IHT 205 but that the grant I received did not need to be amended. Surely they are wrong. Using the excepted state figure of £325,000 will only lead to queries from beneficiaries as to why the deceased had such large liabilities which reduced the estate to a net value of £99,000.

As I have been waiting a long time for the grant and due to the further delay waiting for a reply to my query, I Have decided to hand the grant over to my client and will explain the reason for the error.

Patrick Moroney