£526 Before You See a Penny: The Probate Fee Nobody Budgets

The probate fee has to be paid before probate is granted, and that is the whole awkwardness of it: the money to run the estate is frozen, but the costs of unfreezing it fall due first. So the plain answer to who pays the probate fee before probate is granted is, almost always, a family member out of their own pocket — usually the person applying — who then reclaims it from the estate once the grant arrives and the accounts open up.

The application fee is only the headline. Before a grant exists there is a small stack of costs that all land in the same frozen window: extra sealed copies of the grant, certified copies of the death certificate, a proper valuation or two, and various searches. None of them is enormous on its own, but together they land on whoever stepped forward, at exactly the moment that person has the least spare cash and the most else to deal with.

This page totals what actually has to be paid up front, explains who ends up funding it in practice, and sets out how the money comes back.

The short answer: someone fronts it, then reclaims it

When someone dies, their sole bank accounts are frozen as soon as the bank is told. That freeze is the source of the whole problem. The costs of applying for a grant are due now; the money that will eventually pay them is locked until the grant is issued. The two things are out of sequence, and the gap is filled by whoever is willing and able to pay from their own resources.

In practice that is the applicant — the executor named in the will, or the closest relative entitled to apply where there is no will. There is nothing improper about paying these costs personally; they are proper expenses of administering the estate, and the person who pays them is a creditor of the estate for that amount. The important discipline is simply to keep the paperwork, because reimbursement depends on being able to show what was spent and why.

It is worth being clear that this is a cashflow problem, not a legal one. The estate can well afford the fees; it just cannot reach the money yet. That is the same squeeze that catches people out over the mortgage and the other bills that do not pause for probate, which we set out in who actually pays the mortgage before probate comes through.

The application fee: £526, or nothing under £5,000

The main cost is the application fee itself. In England and Wales it is £526 where the estate is valued at more than £5,000. Where the estate is £5,000 or less, there is no application fee to pay at all — which is worth checking before you assume you owe anything, because a genuinely small estate may cost nothing to apply for.

Source: HM Courts & Tribunals Service, Applying for probate: fees, gov.uk.

The same fee applies whether you use a solicitor or apply yourself, and whether there is a will or not — it is the fee for the grant, not for anyone's advice. It is payable when the application is submitted, which is precisely the moment the estate's own money is least accessible. For most applicants the fee is the single largest thing they have to find personally before anything is released.

Sealed copies: order plenty at £2 each

A grant of probate is only useful when you can show it to the organisations holding the deceased's money, and most of them want to see an official sealed copy rather than a photocopy. You can order extra sealed copies for £2 each when you submit the application. Order them afterwards and they cost £16 each, which is a striking difference for the identical document.

Source: HM Courts & Tribunals Service, Applying for probate: fees, gov.uk.

The practical move is to order more than you think you need — one for each bank, building society, insurer, pension provider and share registrar, plus one for the conveyancer if there is a property to sell. Sending copies out in parallel is dramatically faster than posting a single copy round in turn and waiting for each institution to return it. Even with the grant in hand, releasing the money can be slow, as we describe in probate granted weeks ago and the bank still has not paid, so you do not want the copies to be the thing holding you up on top of that.

The other costs before the grant

Beyond the fee and the copies, several smaller costs cluster in the same pre-grant window, and it is the total that stings rather than any one item.

Certified copies of the death certificate come first, because you will need several of them for banks, pensions and insurers, and each certified copy carries a set fee from the register office. Then there is valuation. To apply for the grant and to report to HMRC you need proper date-of-death values for the estate, and while a bank balance is a matter of a statement, a house is not — a reliable property valuation may cost a fee, and getting it wrong has consequences of its own, which is why three estate agent valuations is not a probate valuation. Finally there are searches, such as bankruptcy searches against beneficiaries and official copies of the title from the Land Registry, each carrying a modest charge.

Individually these are small. Together, on top of £526 and a handful of sealed copies, they are why the person who steps forward can be several hundred pounds out of pocket before a single asset has been touched.

There is one pre-grant cost that dwarfs all of these where it applies, and that is inheritance tax itself. Where an estate is taxable, the tax generally has to be paid — or at least the first instalment of it — before the grant will be issued, which is the reverse of most people's instinct that tax is something settled at the end. That can be a far larger sum than any court fee, and it is the reason the routes for releasing money from the deceased's own accounts, covered below, exist at all. For most estates, though, no inheritance tax is due, and the £526 fee with its attendant copies and certificates remains the real cost that has to be found up front.

Where the money can come from while accounts are frozen

You are not always entirely stuck for the cash, and it is worth knowing the routes that exist before you assume the whole thing has to come from your own current account.

Where there is inheritance tax to pay before the grant, banks and building societies can release money from the deceased's own accounts to pay HMRC directly under the Direct Payment Scheme, and some will also release funds towards the probate fee. That does not cover everything, but it can take the largest numbers off your personal balance. Money held in trust, or a life policy written in trust, is a different matter again — it sits outside the estate and can reach the family without waiting for the grant at all, which is exactly why money in trust reaches children before probate does. And if the estate includes a let property, rent may keep arriving that can be applied to expenses, though who is entitled to collect it needs care, as we explain in who collects the rent after a landlord dies, before probate.

What none of these routes changes is the basic timing problem for the ordinary applicant with a straightforward estate: the fee is due now, and the current account it comes from is very often their own.

How the cost comes back

The good news is that every properly incurred cost of administering the estate is reimbursable, and ranks ahead of the beneficiaries. Once the grant is issued and funds are released, the person who paid the fees is paid back before anyone receives their inheritance. Administration expenses are simply not the same as a gift you are making to the estate; they are a debt the estate owes you.

Two habits protect that entitlement. Keep every receipt — the fee, the copies, the certificates, the valuations, the searches — and record each payment in the estate accounts, with the date and what it was for. Beneficiaries are entitled to see those accounts, and a clear record is what turns "I paid for all this" into a reimbursement nobody argues about. It also keeps you on the right side of your duties as the person administering the estate, which matter more than people expect; the wider picture is in our guide to probate, the estate and inheritance tax.

If you instruct a solicitor to handle the application, their fees are an administration expense too, and they will usually ask for money on account before starting — so professional help does not remove the up-front cost, it changes its shape. Whether you do it yourself or use a professional, keep the costs reasonable and proportionate to the estate, because beneficiaries can question expenses that look excessive for what was involved. The safest position is one where every figure in the accounts is a genuine cost of getting the estate in and paid out, and every one of them is backed by a receipt.

Scotland and Northern Ireland

The figures above are for England and Wales. The rest of the UK does not use the same fees, and in one case not even the same process.

In Scotland the equivalent of probate is confirmation, applied for through the sheriff court, and it has its own fee structure geared to the value of the estate rather than the single flat fee used in England and Wales. Northern Ireland runs its own probate system through its own office, again with its own fees and its own rules for smaller estates, which we set out in how probate in Northern Ireland runs on its own rules. In every part of the UK, though, the underlying difficulty is identical: the costs come before the grant, and the grant comes before the money.

That timing gap is the real reason families feel the pinch, and it is the case for holding some money outside the estate. A life insurance policy written in trust pays out to the family directly, usually on the death certificate alone and without waiting for the grant, which is what gives them the cash to cover the fee, the funeral and the other early costs at the point they actually fall due. Whether cover is available, and on what terms, depends on age, health and the insurer's underwriting, so if closing that gap is what you are thinking about you can get life insurance quotes through an FCA-authorised broker.

Frequently asked questions

Who pays the probate fee before probate is granted?

In practice a family member does, because the estate's accounts are frozen. The application fee, extra sealed copies, death certificates, valuations and searches all fall due first. Whoever pays should keep the receipts, as these are proper administration expenses recoverable from the estate later.

Can I get the probate costs back from the estate?

Yes. Costs properly incurred in administering an estate are reimbursed before beneficiaries receive anything, once funds are released. Keep every receipt and record the payments in the estate accounts so beneficiaries can see exactly what was spent, when, and what it was for.

How many sealed copies of the grant should I order?

Order more than you think you need, one for each bank, insurer, pension provider, share registrar and the conveyancer, because they cost far less ordered with the application than afterwards. Sending copies out in parallel is much faster than passing a single copy round in turn.