MyHMCTS Online Probate System Becomes Mandatory For Practitioners

Under legislation laid in Parliament today, probate professionals will be forced to submit probate forms and applications online from next month.

HM Courts and Tribunals Services (HMCTS) and other professionals have been urging probate practitioners and firms to sign up and start using ‘MyHMCTS’ for probate applications.

The Government promises a ‘quicker and more reliable’ probate service so HMCTS is encouraging legal professionals to use the online services by creating a ‘MyHMCTS’ account, which “provides a single place for legal professional and other organisations to issue, pay for and manage applications within civil and family courts and tribunals.”

The statutory instrument mandates that legal professionals use the online system in most cases where possible from 2nd November. However, where cases are more complex, involving multiple claimants where the deceased has no will, paper forms will still be allowed to ensure that proper manual checks ensue.

The latest Government figures reveal only a third of probate applications are being processed digitally but the The Ministry of Justice confirm the changes should see around three quarters of professional user applications move online.

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said:

“Our efficient online probate services are simpler, quicker and more reliable, and reduce the stress on grieving families.”

The Law Society said:

“Practitioners will want to have assurance that the online systems work and are fully tested before mandating their use; the service levels will not decline; and that these changes won’t lead to excessive changes to fees.”

Helen Stewart, Head of Probate at Thomson Snell & Passmore says:

“We think this is good news for clients and practitioners alike. Any initiative that can make the probate process more efficient should be welcomed. As a team we are and have been submitting online applications for a good while now and have found it to work really well to streamline the process. For example, firms no longer need to complete paper statements of truth and can also manage all their probate applications through an online dashboard.

“We hope these new rules will be quickly embraced by the industry as a whole and will enable grants to be processed more quickly which in turn will enable personal representatives to deal with the estate assets and administration of an estate without delay.

Director of SFE, Ruth Pyatt raised concerns regarding the online probate application process with representatives of HMCTS a year ago. Of the move to make it compulsory for probate professionals to submit applications using the online probate system, she said:

“It’s no secret that there have been teething problems with the online probate system, and it just isn’t able to handle more complex applications. The Government’s promise of a ‘quicker and more reliable’ probate service definitely isn’t there yet. The worry is this will cause additional delays on top of the issues caused by Covid-19, at a challenging time when solicitors are already doing their best to reassure anxious clients. It’s currently taking anywhere between one and two months to issue the most simple grant and we’ve found many are being issued with errors which require them to be returned for amendment.

“A slow and steady move to digital only applications is accepted as necessary, but to make it compulsory at this stage, given all the problems with the system, is a step too far.

“SFE members have access to a really useful online discussion forum and as you can imagine this has been a hot topic. On a practical level, many of us have found that Google Chrome works better than Internet Explorer and the probate webchat facility seems to be the best means of contacting the registries.”

Read the Government’s Consultation Outcome on Non-Contentious Probate ‘Mandating Online Professional Applications’  here.