Are Will Disputes Rising in the UK? What the Data Shows

The honest answer is that nobody can prove it from official statistics, because no government body publishes a running count of how many wills are contested each year. What can be measured is the set of pressures around inheritance, and several of those are clearly moving upward.

This piece separates the two. It sets out the official figures that are rising, such as the number of estates in the inheritance tax net, alongside the court data often quoted as evidence of a "surge", which turns out to measure something broader. Every figure below comes from a named official source, with its reference period and a link at the point of use. Figures are current as at July 2026 and are subject to change. It describes England and Wales, with Scotland and Northern Ireland flagged where the position differs. For the underlying snapshot, our companion guide to will disputes statistics gathers the same court and probate data in one place.

Are will disputes rising in the UK?

On the available official data, the answer is uncertain rather than a clear yes. No published series counts contested wills, so any headline "up by X%" claim usually rests on private surveys or freedom-of-information requests rather than a national statistic. What can be verified is that several pressures behind inheritance disputes, including estate values and the number of taxpaying estates, are rising, while the death and probate volumes that feed the system have recently fallen.

That mixed picture matters, because the single number most often cited as proof of a rise, the volume of High Court Chancery work, moved up in 2025 for reasons that had little to do with wills. The sections below set out what is measurable and where the data stops.

Key figures at a glance

The table gathers the verified official figures that bear on whether inheritance disputes may be rising. Each row names its source, its reference period and a link. Read together they describe rising estate values and stable-to-falling probate volumes, rather than a direct tally of contested wills, which is not separately published anywhere in the official statistics.

All figures as at July 2026 and subject to change. "FCSQ" is the Family Court Statistics Quarterly; "CJSQ" is the Civil Justice Statistics Quarterly. Court and probate figures are for England and Wales.

What is behind the pressure on disputes

Several long-running changes plausibly increase the room for inheritance disputes, though none can be tied to a published count of contested wills. The measurable ones point to larger and more complex estates: more estates paying inheritance tax, a frozen tax-free band, and property values that push ordinary homes toward the thresholds. These are drivers of risk rather than proof of more claims.

The court figures most often quoted as evidence of a surge need care. Chancery Division proceedings in the High Court, whose Property, Trusts and Probate List handles contentious probate, rose 15% to 16,772 in 2025 from 14,561 in 2024, with 3,371 claims issued and other originating proceedings that year (MoJ, Civil Justice Statistics Quarterly, 2025 annual data, as at July 2026, subject to change). That rise was driven mainly by Companies Court work, which increased 21% to 12,052, rather than by inheritance claims (MoJ, CJSQ, 2025, as at July 2026, subject to change). So the headline Chancery increase is not, on its own, evidence that more wills are being challenged.

Rising estate values change the stakes of a dispute. They do not, by themselves, tell you that more disputes are happening.

Meanwhile the volumes that feed the system fell. Around 568,613 deaths were registered in England and Wales in 2024, down 2.2% on 2023 (ONS, Death registration summary statistics, 2024, as at July 2026, subject to change), and the courts issued 239,091 probate grants in 2025, down 10% on 2024 (MoJ, Family Court Statistics Quarterly, Oct to Dec 2025, as at July 2026, subject to change). A rising share of disputes would therefore have to sit within a slightly smaller pool of estates, which makes a simple "everything is going up" reading harder to sustain. Practitioners also report, from freedom-of-information responses, that applications to enter a caveat have been rising, but caveat volumes are not published as an official national series, so that trend cannot be verified here and is noted only as a secondary observation.

What the numbers mean

Read carefully, the data supports a cautious claim: the conditions for disputes are intensifying even where the count of disputes cannot be seen. Estate values and the tax net are rising, which raises what is at stake, while deaths and probate grants have edged down. The often-quoted court increase reflects company and insolvency work, not will challenges, so it should not be read as a probate surge.

In our experience, a clearly drafted will, kept up to date and properly witnessed, tends to reduce the room for later argument, though it cannot guarantee that no dispute will arise. Where an estate is larger or a family is blended, many people choose to discuss the drafting with a qualified professional before finalising anything. The honest conclusion is that "rising" is plausible on the drivers but not provable from any single official count, and readers are better served by that nuance than by a headline percentage. Many people find it useful to read our guide on How to Write a Will alongside the wider estate planning guide.

Scotland and Northern Ireland

The figures above describe England and Wales, and the other UK nations differ. Scotland has its own succession law, including legal rights that can entitle a spouse and children to a fixed share of the moveable estate, which changes the shape of many disputes, and it uses confirmation rather than a grant of probate. Northern Ireland runs a separate but broadly similar system to England and Wales. The court, probate and tax statistics cited here are collected on a basis that does not read across cleanly to Scotland or Northern Ireland.

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