A woman has hit out over a probate issue – after her husband died, and now she can’t access their savings or sell their house. Writing into the Guardian newspaper’s consumer affairs section, the woman hit out over the probate problem which has affected her amid the Cost of Living crisis.
LG reported her husband died in May 2022 at the age of 52, leaving her and three children. “I applied for probate over a year ago but, even though I have complained, it has still not been granted. I feel in total despair at the Kafkaesque situation I am in,” she said.
She says she is unable to access savings or sell their home. “We are British, his will was written in the UK, and it straightforwardly left everything to me. But he died in Switzerland, where he was working as a diplomat with the UK mission when his cancer was diagnosed,” she explained.
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The Guardian reports the HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) has been hit by delays and the woman’s tale is far from the only one. Applications stopped, pending further information, take on average 34 weeks, the newspaper reported.
But the woman has been waiting over a year. HMCTS says: “We apologise wholeheartedly for the delay to this application which has now been issued. Most applications take around nine weeks and we are continually working to improve processing times.”
Someone should usually get the grant of probate within 16 weeks of submitting an application, although complex cases can take up to 25 weeks to complete, according to the government guidelines. But in the three years to April, the number of probate cases taking more than an entire year to be granted rose by 65 per cent, according to a freedom of information (FOI) request by finance firm Quilter.
And it found a 112 per cent rise in the number of cases taking over six months.