APPLYING FOR A GRANT OF PROBATE (Continued...)

There will also be many disbursements to pay out. Disbursements are fees related to your matter that are payable to third parties, such as court fees. We handle the payment of the disbursements on your behalf to ensure a smoother process but may ask you to pay these to us in advance if we cannot use the estate funds for that purpose.

The following disbursements are not included in the fee mentioned above:

- Probate application fee of £155 payable to the Probate Court
- £7.00 swearing of the oath (per executor)
- If any additional copies of the grant are required, they will cost £0.50 each (1 per asset usually).

The following disbursements are not included in the fee mentioned above and are not always necessary:

- Bankruptcy-only Land Charges Department searches (£2.00 per beneficiary)
- £84.60 (inc VAT) for posting an advertisement in The London Gazette. This protects against unexpected claims from unknown creditors. This fee changes annually. See https://www.thegazette.co.uk/place-notice/pricing
- approximately £400 (plus VAT) for posting an advertisement in a newspaper local to the home of the deceased. This also helps to protect against unexpected claims. The amount depends on the newspaper and the size of the advertisement.

Potential additional costs
If there is no Will or the estate consists of any share holdings (stocks and bonds) or other forms of property (eg valuables) there will be additional costs that could increase significantly depending on the total size of the estate and how it is to be dealt with. We can give you a more accurate quote once we have more information.
Dealing with the sale or transfer of any property in the estate is not included.

How long will this take?
On average, estates that fall within this range are dealt with within 12 months. Typically, obtaining the grant of probate takes about four months. Collecting assets then follows, which can take between two to three months. Once this has been done, we can distribute the assets, which normally takes two months.

As an illustrative example, the cost for doing the legal work in dealing with an application for a Grant of Probate of a Will and then distributing liquid assets of about £50,000 comprised in two bank accounts to four beneficiaries would be about £2,500 plus VAT and disbursements of about £175. The total might therefore be about £3,175. It is impossible to advise about this without more information but we are happy to do so when we know the full facts.