Do You Need Probate? How to Check Before You Apply

Many estates never need probate at all. GOV.UK states you may not need it if the person who died only had savings, or owned their property and accounts jointly with someone who survived them, because jointly held assets usually pass automatically to the surviving owner. The way to find out is to ask each organisation holding an asset whether it requires a grant. Every one of them sets its own rules.

This check is worth doing before anything else. It takes a few letters and a couple of weeks, and it can save you a £526 fee, a pile of paperwork, and a three-month wait for a document nobody was going to ask you for.

This guide covers England and Wales. Scotland and Northern Ireland have different processes.

That is the general rule, and the rest of this guide is the detail behind it. Whether this estate needs a grant depends on what it holds and how it was owned — the four answers, and what each one means next.

The short answer, and the reason it is not shorter

There is no single rule that says "estates under £X need probate". People look for one constantly and it does not exist.

What actually happens is this: each organisation holding the person's money decides for itself what proof of authority it needs before releasing it. A bank with £40,000 of the person's money is deciding whether to hand that money to you on the strength of a death certificate and a form, or whether to insist on a court document first. Different banks draw that line in different places.

GOV.UK's guidance is therefore procedural rather than numerical: "Contact the financial organisations the person who died used (for example, their bank and mortgage company) to find out if you'll need probate to get access to their assets. Every organisation has its own rules."

So the question "do I need probate" is really a set of smaller questions, one per asset.

Assets that usually need a grant

• Property in the sole name of the person who died. The Land Registry will want the grant before the title can be transferred or sold.
• Property held as tenants in common. Their share passes under the will or the intestacy rules, not to the co-owner automatically.
• Sole-name bank or building society accounts above the provider's threshold.
• Shares held in their sole name.
• Investments, bonds and unit trusts in their sole name.

Assets that usually do not

• Anything owned as joint tenants. GOV.UK: land or property owned as joint tenants "automatically passes to the surviving owners". This is the single biggest reason an estate needs no grant, and it is why many widows and widowers deal with the whole thing without going near a court.
• Joint bank accounts. These normally pass to the surviving account holder by survivorship.
• Small sole-name balances, where the provider is content with a small-estates indemnity form instead.
• Death-in-service payments and most workplace pension lump sums, where the scheme trustees have discretion over who receives the money. These usually bypass the estate entirely.
• Life insurance written in trust. The policy pays the named beneficiary directly and never forms part of the estate.

That last pair catches people out in both directions. A policy written in trust does not need a grant and does not count towards the estate for Inheritance Tax; the same policy not written in trust does both.

Joint tenants or tenants in common: how to tell

This is the pivotal question for any couple who owned a home, and the answer is not a matter of memory.

Check the Land Registry title. Download the title register for the property from GOV.UK for a small fee. If the register contains a Form A restriction, the property was held as tenants in common. If there is no such restriction, it was almost certainly held as joint tenants.

	Joint tenants	Tenants in common
Who owns what	Both own the whole, together	Each owns a distinct share
On death	Passes automatically to the survivor	Passes under the will or intestacy
Grant needed for it?	Usually no	Usually yes
Land Registry sign	No Form A restriction	Form A restriction present

Do not rely on what anyone remembers being told at the time of purchase. Couples frequently sever a joint tenancy years later for tax or care-fee planning and it is genuinely forgotten. The register is the evidence.

How to run the check, practically

1. Make a list of every organisation

Bank accounts, building society accounts, the mortgage lender, pension providers, insurers, the share registrar, National Savings and Investments, Premium Bonds. Go through twelve months of bank statements: standing orders and direct debits will surface accounts and policies nobody remembered.

2. Write to each one

Send a copy of the death certificate and ask, in terms:

"I am dealing with the estate of [name], who died on [date]. Please confirm the balance as at the date of death, and please confirm whether you require a grant of representation before releasing this asset."

That single letter does double duty: it gets you the date-of-death figure you will need for the valuation anyway, and it gets you the grant answer in writing.

3. Check the property title

Download the title register and look for the Form A restriction.

4. Add up what is actually blocked

If the only assets that need a grant are worth less than the effort of obtaining one, and the organisations will release them on an indemnity, you may be finished.

5. Check nobody has already applied

GOV.UK lets you search the probate records to see whether a grant has already been issued. Worth two minutes if there is any chance a relative got there first: a second application after a grant has issued costs £22 and is a different process.

"Probate is not needed" does not mean "nothing to do"

This is the most important caveat in this guide, and it is where the well-intentioned advice on forums tends to go wrong.

Not needing a grant means you do not need a court document to unlock the assets. It does not mean:

• There is no Inheritance Tax to report. The duty to report the estate's value to HMRC depends on the estate's value and composition, not on whether a grant is needed. GOV.UK is explicit that even where there is no tax to pay, you still need the estimated value of the estate.
• The debts do not have to be paid. They do, from the estate, before anyone inherits.
• The will does not matter. It still governs who gets what.
• You carry no responsibility. Whoever administers the estate is responsible for doing it properly.

So run the two checks independently. "Do I need a grant?" is a question for the banks. "Do I need to report anything to HMRC?" is a question about the size and shape of the estate.

This is the point where a general answer stops being much use, because from here the route depends on your actual figures: whether a grant is needed, and if so whether HMRC also wants full details of the estate. Those four possibilities are set out here, with what each one involves.

If it turns out you do need probate

Then the process is well-trodden and you can do it yourself. Our guide to applying for probate without a solicitor walks the whole thing, and PA1P or PA1A covers picking the right form.

One thing to do straight away if you know you will be applying: work out how many sealed copies of the grant you will want, because they cost £2 each ordered with the application and £16 each afterwards. One per organisation holding an asset, plus a spare.

The awkward middle: when only one asset needs a grant

The most frustrating outcome of this check is finding that everything is releasable except one thing. A single share holding, or a small sole-name account at a bank with a low threshold, can force a full application for an estate that is otherwise unblocked.

Before accepting that, try three things.

Ask the organisation what its actual threshold is, in writing. Frontline staff sometimes quote a policy more conservative than the written one, particularly for an estate where the money passes to a surviving spouse.

Ask whether they will accept an indemnity instead. Many providers have a small-estates process where you sign an indemnity accepting responsibility if someone else later proves a better claim. They will not always offer it unprompted.

Check whether the asset can simply be left. A small shareholding that nobody needs to sell can sometimes stay where it is, though this stores up the same problem for whoever deals with it next. That is a judgement call, not a recommendation.

If none of that works, apply. The fee is the same whether the blocked asset is worth £6,000 or £600,000.

What "small estate" means, and why it is not a legal term

People often arrive at this question having been told an estate is "too small to need probate". That phrase has no legal meaning in England and Wales.

There is no statutory threshold below which probate is not required. What exists is:

• Each institution's own release limit, set by internal policy, typically somewhere between £5,000 and £50,000 and differing widely.
• The £5,000 court fee exemption, which is about the fee, not about whether a grant is needed. An estate under £5,000 that somehow needed a grant would still need one; it just would not pay for it.

Those two get conflated constantly, including by people who ought to know better. The £5,000 figure in the fee table tells you nothing about whether you need to apply.

A worked example

Margaret dies. She left a will naming her son as executor. She owned:

Asset	Value	Held how	Grant needed?
The house	£280,000	Joint tenants with her husband	No, passes to him automatically
Joint current account	£4,000	Joint with her husband	No, passes by survivorship
Sole savings account	£11,000	Sole name	Ask the bank
Premium Bonds	£3,000	Sole name	Ask NS&I
Life policy	£50,000	Written in trust for her son	No, pays him directly

On paper this looks like a £348,000 estate. In practice only £14,000 is even potentially blocked, and if the bank's threshold is above £11,000 and NS&I will pay out on its own form, no grant is needed at all.

Now change one fact: the house was held as tenants in common. Margaret's half share passes under her will, the Land Registry will want a grant to deal with it, and the whole picture changes. That single detail, which is recorded on the title register and not in anyone's memory, is the difference between no application and a full one.

Questions worth asking each organisation

To avoid a second round of letters, ask all of these the first time:

1. What was the balance as at the date of death, including interest to that date?
2. Do you require a grant of representation to release this asset?
3. If not, what do you require instead, and can you send me the form?
4. Was this account held solely or jointly?
5. Do you hold any other accounts or products in this name?

Question five is the one people forget, and it regularly surfaces an ISA or an old account nobody knew about.

Frequently asked questions

How do I know if I need probate?

Contact every organisation holding the person's money or property and ask directly whether it needs a grant of representation to release the asset. GOV.UK advises this because every organisation sets its own rules and its own threshold. If every answer is no, you do not need probate.

Do you need probate if everything was owned jointly?

Usually not. GOV.UK states that land or property owned as joint tenants, and shares or money owned with others, automatically pass to the surviving owners unless they agreed otherwise. Assets that pass this way are outside the grant, so no probate is needed to transfer them.

What is the bank threshold for probate?

There is no single legal threshold. Each bank sets its own limit for releasing funds without a grant, and the limits differ widely between institutions. GOV.UK's advice is to contact each organisation and ask, rather than assume a figure applies.

Do you need probate if there is a will?

Not automatically. A will names who should deal with the estate, but it does not decide whether a grant is required. That depends on what the person owned and how they owned it. An estate with a will can need no grant, and an estate without one can need a grant.

Do you need probate to sell a house?

If the property was in the person's sole name, or held as tenants in common, you will normally need a grant before you can sell or transfer it. If it was held as joint tenants with someone who survived them, it passes to the survivor automatically and no grant is needed for it.

What is the difference between joint tenants and tenants in common?

Joint tenants own the whole property together, and when one dies their share passes automatically to the survivor. Tenants in common each own a distinct share that passes under their will or the intestacy rules, which usually means a grant is required to deal with it.

Can I check whether probate has already been granted?

Yes. GOV.UK lets you search the probate records to see whether a grant has already been issued for someone. This is worth checking if you think another relative may already have applied, because a second application after a grant has issued costs £22.

If the answer turned out to be no, you are done, and you owe us nothing — that is roughly two in five estates and it is a perfectly good outcome. If it turned out to be yes, the next question is which forms, and that is set out here along with what help completing them will cost.

Sources

Checked 17 September 2026:

• GOV.UK, Applying for probate: What is probate — when probate may not be needed, jointly owned assets, checking the probate records
• GOV.UK, Applying for probate: Fees — £526 application fee, £2 and £16 copy fees, £22 second application
• GOV.UK, How to value an estate for Inheritance Tax — valuing and reporting duties
• GOV.UK, Dealing with the estate of someone who's died — the personal representative's responsibilities

Rules change, and the rules that apply are generally those in force at the date of death. Check GOV.UK for the current position.

Related guides

• How to apply for probate without a solicitor
• PA1P or PA1A: which probate form do you need?
• How much does probate cost in the UK?
• What to do when someone dies: the first two weeks
• How to value an estate for probate