How we source and check figures

Every figure on this site comes from the organisation that publishes it, carries the date it was checked, and links to its source. A script re-reads the sources to confirm each figure is still there, and the site's tests fail if any bank limit, fee or rule goes unchecked for more than 6 months.

Method last reviewed 11 October 2026

Probate waiting times

Source: HMCTS management information, published monthly on gov.uk under the Open Government Licence. The latest release is HMCTS management information - August 2026, published 8 October 2026. We hold 14 months, from July 2025 to August 2026.

• Every Thursday a script looks for a new release. It reads the CSV and finds the 25 probate columns by their headings. If a heading is missing, matches twice, or is left over, the update stops.
• HMCTS revises earlier months in each release. Small revisions are accepted and logged. A count moving by more than 30 and 2%, an average moving by more than 1.5 weeks, or a value landing nearer a different column's old figure stops the update for a person to check.
• Totals have to add up: open cases by age, stopped plus workable, and online plus paper. The site has to build and pass its page checks before new figures go live.
• A person also reads releases by hand against the published file. The most recent was the August 2026 release, on 11 October 2026.

How we use them: HMCTS's definitions come from the footnotes of its Excel release. Averages for stopped and not-stopped applications describe different groups, so we publish them side by side and never combine them. Year-on-year comparisons use the same month a year apart. HMCTS management information isn't official statistics, and it differs from the Ministry of Justice's quarterly figures.

Quarterly official statistics

Source: Family Court Statistics Quarterly: April to June 2026, the Ministry of Justice's official statistics, published 24 September 2026. They give what the monthly figures don't: the median wait, waits by type of grant, and how many people apply without a solicitor. We hold 29 quarters of waiting times and 14 full years of applications.

• The same weekly job reads each new release's CSVs by column name and stops if a column is missing, a total doesn't add up, or the data ends in a different quarter from the release's title.
• Up to 2021, the online and paper figures fall slightly short of the total (by up to 0.6%), so that check allows 1%. April to June 2019 has no breakdown by type of grant. HMCTS changed the database that records probate cases in May 2019.
• Our parser's figures for April to June 2026 were checked by hand against the release's spreadsheet on 11 October 2026. The spreadsheet is a separate file from the CSVs.
• Annual figures use full calendar years only; the current year is left out until it's complete.

What banks release without probate

Source: each bank or building society's own website, and nowhere else. We hold 22 institutions, of which 16 publish a limit. Each limit is stored with a quote of 15 words or fewer from the bank's page that contains the figure.

• We never take a limit from a comparison table, a law firm's blog, or a newspaper.
• Banks word their limits differently (“up to”, “under”, “over”). The checker follows each bank's own wording, and where it leaves the exact limit unclear we treat that amount as needing a grant and say so.
• Where a bank's own documents disagree, we follow its main bereavement page and note the conflict.
• Limits were last checked 11 October 2026.

Court fees

Source: gov.uk for the current fees, checked against the Non-Contentious Probate Fees Order 2004 on legislation.gov.uk. The fee history comes from legislation.gov.uk's dated versions of that law, from the fee in force before January 2022 to today's. Last checked 11 October 2026.

What solicitors charge

These figures are three different kinds of thing, and every page that uses them says which:

• A regulator survey: Legal Services Board, Prices of individual consumer legal services 2024. These are prices firms quoted for one example estate, not what people paid. The report gives two different averages for dealing with an estate, so we only use its medians and middle ranges.
• Government-backed guidance: MoneyHelper's ranges, which are its own estimates with no stated source.
• A published tariff: Lloyds Bank's own price list.

Last checked 11 October 2026.

Rules and guidance

Rules on the explainer pages come from gov.uk's probate guides. We hold 32 facts, each with the gov.uk page it's on and a short quote, and the source check confirms every quote is still there. Property rules come from HM Land Registry practice guide 6. Last checked 11 October 2026.

Where gov.uk gives no detail, we don't fill the gap: the page says to ask the organisation concerned or a solicitor.

Home insurance

Source: guidance from Citizens Advice, the Association of British Insurers, the Financial Ombudsman Service and gov.uk, and each named insurer's empty-home limit from its own website or policy booklet. Every one is stored with a short quote and re-checked by the same script. We don't list or rank insurers. Last checked 11 October 2026.

What we won't do

• Give legal or financial advice. We describe the rules and link to them.
• Present an estimate as a measurement, or one source's figure as another's.
• Combine averages that describe different groups of applications.
• Type a waiting time, court fee or bank limit into a page by hand. Those are read from the data, so an update can't leave a sentence out of date.
• Let a paid link change a figure or a verdict. There are none today.

Corrections

• 11 October 2026, /how-long-does-probate-take/: The monthly refresh on 8 October 2026 failed when HMCTS revised its July figures, so the page showed July 2026 for three days after the August release. The check that caused it was fixed and August's figures were published on 11 October.

Spotted something wrong? Tell James Burfield through the contact form on seoburf.com. See about Probate and Wills UK for who runs the site.