Probate Stuck for Months? There's Now a Way to Escalate
If you've been an executor waiting on a grant of probate that seems to have vanished into a black hole, there's finally a formal route to do something about it. HM Courts and Tribunals Service confirmed this week that it has introduced a dedicated escalation pathway for probate applications that have been stuck for more than 12 weeks, or for cases that have already been queried and need further investigation. It's a small administrative change, but for anyone stuck mid-probate with a house sale on hold or bills piling up, it could matter a great deal.
Why HMCTS Introduced an Escalation Route
Probate delays have been a persistent complaint from grieving families and the solicitors who represent them for several years now. HMCTS says the new escalation process is designed to "improve visibility of outstanding applications and ensure delayed cases can be reviewed and progressed more effectively." In plain terms: applications were disappearing into a queue with no clear way to flag that something had gone wrong, and this gives applicants and their solicitors a formal mechanism to ask for a case to be looked at again.
It won't fix probate delays overnight, and it isn't a fast-track for every case. But it does give executors somewhere to turn when a straightforward application has been sitting untouched for months with no explanation.
How the New Escalation Process Actually Works
The process isn't a case of simply emailing HMCTS and demanding an update the moment your application feels slow. There's a specific sequence you need to follow before you're able to escalate:
First, you (or your solicitor) need to request a case progression update through the probate service, either online or by contacting the team directly. HMCTS then asks that you allow at least 10 working days for a response to that request. If your case has already been queried and you've submitted the requested information, you're asked to allow up to six weeks for a response before taking further action.
Only once those timeframes have passed without a resolution can you use the formal escalation form to push the case up for higher-level review. It's a process that rewards patience and precision — missing a step, or escalating too early, is likely to send you back to the start of the queue.
What This Means If You're Dealing With an Estate
For families managing probate without legal support, keeping track of these timeframes on top of everything else involved in administering an estate — valuing assets, settling debts, dealing with HMRC, communicating with beneficiaries — is a lot to hold in your head while grieving. It's easy to lose track of exactly when you made a request, or to escalate at the wrong moment and have to start the clock again.
This is precisely the kind of administrative pressure a probate solicitor takes off your hands. Beyond the legal complexity of administering an estate correctly, a solicitor experienced in probate will know when a case has genuinely overrun HMCTS's own timescales, exactly how to invoke the new escalation route on your behalf, and how to chase it without jeopardising the application. If your case involves a property that needs to be sold, that kind of proactive chasing can be the difference between a sale proceeding smoothly and a buyer walking away out of frustration with the delay.
Is Escalating Always the Right Move?
Not necessarily straight away. Some delays are genuinely because HMCTS needs more information — an incomplete inheritance tax form, a missing death certificate reference, or an estate that's more complex than the standard online process was built for. Escalating before you've resolved the underlying query won't speed things up; it may simply generate the same request again. A solicitor can help you work out whether your case is stuck because of a genuine backlog, or because something in the application needs fixing first — and address the right problem rather than the symptom.
What Should You Do Next?
If you're an executor whose probate application has stalled and you're not sure whether escalation is the right next step, or how to navigate the process correctly, you don't have to work it out alone. QualitySolicitors' first contact team can put you in touch with an experienced probate solicitor from our network, local to you, who can review where your application stands, handle the process on your behalf, and keep things moving so you can focus on what matters.