Arranging the affairs of the deceased used to take a few weeks, but Covid delays and a computer system some think inadequate have changed all that
When Penelope Ormerod appealed to the Observer for help, she wrote: “I am close to despair.” She had applied for probate on her late aunt’s estate in September. Nearly seven months later, she was still waiting. The application had been sent from her local register office in Oxford to Manchester and was never seen again, while the newly centralised number for probate inquiries was almost impossible to get through on.
“My aunt had left a life-changing amount to her great nephews and nieces and I suspect the probate service has lost the paperwork,” she says. “The beneficiaries were counting on using it to fund university and retraining courses, but their plans remain dreams while the money sits in a black hole somewhere.”
