Probate application fee: £526 over £5,000, and why ordering copies up front saves £14 each

A client asks what the court will charge to get probate on their mother's estate, and how many copies of the grant they should ask for. The fee is a single figure. The copies are where a small mistake adds up.

What GOV.UK says

The fees page I read gives these points:

• Where the value of the estate is over £5,000, the application fee is £526.
• If the estate is £5,000 or less, there is no fee.
• Extra copies of the grant cost £2 each if ordered when you submit the application, and £16 each if ordered afterwards.
• A second application, where probate has already been granted, costs £22, even if the estate is £5,000 or less.

The page gave no effective date and no mention of a future change. The page about applying for a grant of representation gives no figure at all and sends you to the fees page.

The sums

Assume a client needs 8 certified copies in total: banks, building society, pension provider, two insurers, the land registry and the share registrar.

Check of the second row: 526 + 10 + 48 = 584. Against the first row, 584 - 542 = 42, and 3 late copies x £14 gap = £42. Check of the last row: four unused copies cost 4 x £2 = £8, and 542 + 8 = 550.

So a copy ordered late costs £14 more than the same copy ordered up front, while a copy ordered and never used costs £2. Over-ordering is therefore the cheaper mistake. The test is £2 / £16 = 0.125: a copy is worth ordering up front if the chance of needing it is above 12.5%.

The estate-value line matters too. An estate of £5,000 exactly pays nothing; one of £5,001 pays £526. I did not read how the estate is valued for this test, so check that before you tell a client which side they fall on.

Putting it into practice

• Ask for the list of institutions on the first call. Count them, add a spare or two, and put the total on the file before the application goes in. The probate timeline and key dates shows where the list fits.
• Quote the court fee separately from your own fee, as a disbursement, with the copies shown as a separate line. See the client care letter checklist.
• Check whether probate is needed at all for small estates using the small estate guide.
• Warn about the other fees in the same estate, such as the caveat fee, if there is a dispute.

What I did not read

I did not read the help-with-fees rules, how to pay, whether the fee differs for paper and online applications, or the statutory instrument that sets it. I did not check whether the fee changes after today, or how the court treats an estate valued close to £5,000. Read the current GOV.UK page before you quote.

Overlyft builds AI staff who join your firm's team, list the institutions from the intake notes, count the copies and draft the fee line for the client letter, with a person approving it before it is sent.

This is general information, not legal advice. Check the current GOV.UK pages and your own obligations for each client.