From 1 October, it has become the Business and Property Division, bringing together specialist courts previously split between the Chancery and King’s Bench Divisions.
The change was first announced in June but officially came into force this week, bringing the Chancery Division name to an end.
Probate researchers Fraser & Fraser have marked the end of a name closely associated with trusts and estates for generations.
Created in 1875 under the Judicature Acts, the Chancery Division brought the old Court of Chancery into the modern High Court structure. For more than a century, it has dealt with trusts, estates, companies, insolvency, land and intellectual property.
For probate practitioners, very little changes in practice. The Property, Trusts and Probate List remains and will continue to deal with contentious probate, trust disputes, estate administration and applications concerning personal representatives.
The change completes a process which began with the creation of the Business and Property Courts in 2017. Until now, the specialist courts were still divided between the Chancery and King’s Bench Divisions.
Court documents will now refer to the Business and Property Division, while its judicial head becomes the President of the Business and Property Division, replacing the long-standing title of Chancellor of the High Court.
For Fraser & Fraser, whose work tracing beneficiaries and assisting with estate administration regularly brings the firm into contact with probate practitioners, the disappearance of the Chancery name also marks the end of a familiar part of English legal history.
The name Chancery itself has been part of the English legal system for centuries and even found its way into literature. Charles Dickens famously used the seemingly endless fictional case of Jarndyce v Jarndyce in Bleak House to satirise the old Court of Chancery.
The work associated with Chancery is not disappearing. Equity, trusts, estates and property law remain, but after 151 years, the Chancery Division name has gone.
