Research briefing

Probate Delays in England and Wales: A Regional Reading of the 2026 Data

The typical grant now takes about five weeks. Behind that recovered average, a small tail of cases has more than doubled, and the pressure is not spread evenly.

Written by the Fairchild Oldfield team · Research briefing · Last reviewed: July 2026

5 weeks

Mean time to issue a grant of probate after a complete application was submitted, England and Wales, January to March 2026. Down from about seven weeks a year earlier.

Source: Ministry of Justice, Family Court Statistics Quarterly, Jan to Mar 2026.

Probate is the legal authority to administer the estate of someone who has died. In England and Wales, the time taken to obtain that authority collapsed during the pandemic backlog, recovered through 2024 and 2025, and now sits at a mean of about five weeks from submission of a complete application. That headline conceals two things: a small but fast-growing group of cases stuck for a year or more, and a geography of delay risk that official statistics do not publish directly.

This briefing sets out the verified national timeliness data, quantifies the long tail, and then addresses the "regional league table" question honestly. Since a 2019 reform, probate in England and Wales has been processed through a single centralised service centre rather than local district registries, so HM Courts and Tribunals Service does not publish a regional breakdown of grant times. Where this briefing ranks regions, it does so through a clearly labelled model built from mortality and inheritance tax data, not from official processing times. Figures are current as at July 2026 and are subject to change.

Executive summary

The mean time to issue a grant of probate was about 5 weeks after a complete application, England and Wales, January to March 2026, similar to the same quarter of 2025 and down from about 7 weeks in October to December 2024 (MoJ, Family Court Statistics Quarterly, Jan–Mar 2026).
Digital applications not stopped for queries were issued in around 2 weeks on average across 2025, England and Wales (MoJ, FCSQ, Oct–Dec 2025).
Cases taking 21 to 23 months to reach a grant rose 131%, from 88 in 2020/21 to 203 in 2024/25, England and Wales, on a Freedom of Information response from the Ministry of Justice (Quilter FOI analysis, reported 13 April 2026).
Cases taking more than 12 months rose 177%, from 737 to 2,040 over the same period, England and Wales (Quilter FOI analysis, reported 13 April 2026).
Open probate cases stood at 42,490 at the end of March 2026, up 19% from 35,740 a year earlier, England and Wales (MoJ, FCSQ, Jan–Mar 2026).
4.72% of UK deaths incurred an inheritance tax charge in 2023/24, the highest share since 2006/07, and these estates concentrate in London and the South East, which drives them onto the slower full-account route (HMRC, Inheritance Tax liabilities statistics, updated 30 July 2026).
568,613 deaths were registered in England and Wales in 2024, down 2.2% on 2023, setting the underlying volume of estates that pass through probate (ONS, Deaths registered in England and Wales, 2024).
No official regional league table of probate grant times exists, because processing was centralised into a single service centre after the 2019 registry reform; the regional analysis below is a labelled model, not an official statistic.

Key findings

The mean time from submission to grant of probate was about 5 weeks, England and Wales, January to March 2026 (MoJ, FCSQ, Jan–Mar 2026).
Across the whole of 2025 the mean grant time was about 5 weeks, more than 3 weeks faster than in 2024, England and Wales (MoJ, FCSQ, Oct–Dec 2025).
There were 65,254 probate applications in January to March 2026, up 1% on the same quarter of 2025, England and Wales (MoJ, FCSQ, Jan–Mar 2026).
93% of probate applications and 94% of grants were made or issued digitally in January to March 2026, England and Wales (MoJ, FCSQ, Jan–Mar 2026).
Letters of administration with a will took a mean of about 20 weeks, and without a will about 11 weeks, in January to March 2026, England and Wales, both far slower than a standard grant (MoJ, FCSQ, Jan–Mar 2026).
Open probate cases numbered 42,490 at the end of March 2026, up 19% year on year, England and Wales (MoJ, FCSQ, Jan–Mar 2026).
Cases taking 21 to 23 months rose 131% between 2020/21 and 2024/25, from 88 to 203, England and Wales (Quilter FOI of the MoJ, reported 13 April 2026).
Cases taking more than 12 months rose 177% over the same period, from 737 to 2,040, England and Wales (Quilter FOI of the MoJ, reported 13 April 2026).
About one in eight estates took longer than six months to clear probate in 2024/25, England and Wales (Quilter FOI of the MoJ, reported 13 April 2026).
30,400 estates were liable for inheritance tax in 2023/24, an average of £231,000 per taxpaying estate, United Kingdom (HMRC, IHT liabilities statistics, updated 30 July 2026).
London and the South East accounted for the largest numbers of taxpaying estates, at 4,810 and 6,310 respectively in 2023/24, and for close to half of all inheritance tax due (HMRC, IHT liabilities statistics, Table 12.8, 2023/24).
Inheritance tax receipts reached a record £8.5 billion in 2025/26, a fifth consecutive annual record, United Kingdom (HMRC receipts, reported April 2026).
568,613 deaths were registered in England and Wales in 2024, down 2.2% from 581,363 in 2023 (ONS, Deaths registered in England and Wales, 2024).
The North East had the highest age-standardised mortality rate of any English region in 2024, at 1,210.3 deaths per 100,000 for males, while London had the lowest for both sexes (ONS, Deaths registered in England and Wales, 2024).

The national picture: a recovered average

The headline measure published by the Ministry of Justice is the mean number of weeks between submission of a complete probate application and the issue of a grant. That figure fell steadily through 2025 and has held near five weeks into 2026. The improvement is real, and it follows a period in 2023 and early 2024 when grants routinely took two to four months.

Quarter	Mean weeks to grant	Applications	Digital share
Oct–Dec 2024	~7 weeks	Similar	91%
Full year 2025	~5 weeks	242,821	92% / 94%
Oct–Dec 2025	~5 weeks	55,645	92% / 94%
Jan–Mar 2026	~5 weeks	65,254	93% / 94%

Source: Ministry of Justice, Family Court Statistics Quarterly, Oct–Dec 2025 and Jan–Mar 2026, England and Wales. Digital share shown as applications / grants. Mean weeks are rounded as published.

What the mean does not capture is the split between clean digital cases and everything else. Digital applications that are not stopped for a query were issued in about two weeks on average across 2025. That is the experience of a straightforward estate with a valid will, no inheritance tax to account for, and no missing information. Comparability note The mean grant time measures only the court stage after a complete application is filed. It excludes the weeks or months a family spends valuing the estate, and, where tax is due, the time spent clearing inheritance tax with HM Revenue and Customs before the application can be made. The lived timeline for a family is longer than the five-week figure implies.

The measure gap: five weeks or sixteen?

Two numbers circulate in public discussion and they measure different things. The five-week figure is the mean court processing time after submission, from the Ministry of Justice. The sixteen-week figure is the service expectation that families are commonly told to allow, and it was the benchmark used in the April 2026 Freedom of Information analysis of long-running cases. About one in eight estates took longer than six months to clear probate in 2024/25 (Quilter FOI of the MoJ, reported 13 April 2026). Both statements can be true at once: most estates clear quickly, while a meaningful minority run well beyond the average.

The long tail is growing while the average falls

The most important finding in the recent data is a divergence. As the mean grant time improved, the extreme tail of very long cases grew sharply. A Freedom of Information response from the Ministry of Justice, analysed by the wealth manager Quilter and reported in April 2026, set out how the number of cases running for a year or more has moved since the pandemic.

Case duration band	2020/21	2024/25	Change
More than 12 months	737	2,040	+177%
21 to 23 months	88	203	+131%

Source: Quilter, Freedom of Information response from the Ministry of Justice, reported by MoneyWeek, 13 April 2026, England and Wales. Tier 2 flag These counts come from a third-party FOI analysis of official data rather than a routine national statistics release, so the exact banding and definitions are those of the requesting body.

The tail is small in absolute terms against roughly a quarter of a million grants a year, but its direction is the opposite of the headline. A recovering average and a lengthening tail together describe a two-speed system: routine estates move quickly, while complex, contested or tax-bearing estates increasingly do not. For the families in the tail, an estate frozen for a year or more can mean a property that cannot be sold, beneficiaries who cannot be paid, and interest accruing on any unpaid inheritance tax.

The regional question, answered honestly

Searches for a probate "regional league table" assume that grant times vary by where you live. Before the 2019 reform, that was a reasonable expectation, because district probate registries processed applications locally and cleared work at different rates. Since then, applications in England and Wales have been routed through a single centralised courts and tribunals service centre. As a result, the Ministry of Justice publishes probate timeliness for England and Wales as a whole and does not publish a regional breakdown of grant times.

The key limitation, stated plainly. There is no official statistic for "probate waiting time by region" in England and Wales, because probate is processed centrally rather than locally. Any table that ranks regions purely by grant speed is either estimating from incomplete data or misrepresenting national figures. This briefing does not claim to measure differential court speed by postcode. It instead maps where the drivers of delay concentrate.

What can be measured by region is the raw material of probate demand and complexity. Two official datasets speak to this: the geography of deaths, which sets the volume of estates, and the geography of inheritance tax, which sets how many estates are pushed onto the slower full-account route. The synthesis section below combines these into a labelled pressure model.

Where the tax-bearing estates are

Inheritance tax is heavily concentrated. In 2023/24 the South East had the most taxpaying estates of any region, at 6,310, with London next at 4,810, and the two together accounted for close to half of all inheritance tax due across the United Kingdom (HMRC, IHT liabilities statistics, Table 12.8, 2023/24). Every one of those estates must complete the full inheritance tax account and, in most cases, pay or arrange to pay the tax before a grant can issue, which is a large source of front-loaded delay a family can face.

Region	Taxpaying estates, 2023/24	Signal for probate complexity
South East	6,310	Highest volume of full-account estates
London	4,810	Highest tax value; many complex estates
All other UK regions	Balance of 30,400 UK total	Not separately verified in this briefing

Source: HMRC, Inheritance Tax liabilities statistics, Table 12.8, tax year 2023/24, United Kingdom. Coverage flag Only the London and South East estate counts are cited here as verified point figures; the per-region counts for other regions are published in Table 12.8 but are not reproduced in this briefing, so no full eleven-region ranking is asserted.

Where the deaths are

Volume runs the other way. The North East had the highest age-standardised mortality rate of any English region in 2024, at 1,210.3 deaths per 100,000 for males and 908.4 for females, while London had the lowest, at 993.7 and 696.5 (ONS, Deaths registered in England and Wales, 2024). Higher mortality regions generate more estates per head of population, but those estates are on average less likely to be caught by inheritance tax, so they more often qualify for the simpler excepted-estate route and clear faster.

What actually drives probate delay

Delay is a function of complexity and volume more than of geography. Three verified pressures stand out.

Inheritance tax before probate. Where tax is due, the estate must be reported in full to HM Revenue and Customs and the tax settled, or arranged, before an application can be made. Inheritance tax receipts reached a record £8.5 billion in 2025/26, a fifth consecutive record, driven by frozen thresholds and rising asset values (HMRC receipts, reported April 2026). The nil-rate band of £325,000 and residence nil-rate band of up to £175,000 are frozen until 5 April 2031 (gov.uk, as at July 2026), so the share of estates dragged into the full-account process rises even as the number of deaths falls.

A rising taxpaying share. 4.72% of UK deaths incurred an inheritance tax charge in 2023/24, the highest proportion since 2006/07 (HMRC, IHT liabilities statistics, updated 30 July 2026). Each such estate carries a heavier documentary burden than a simple excepted estate, and it is these estates that dominate the long tail.

Grant type. The delay gap by application type dwarfs any plausible regional gap. In January to March 2026, a grant of probate took a mean of about 5 weeks, but letters of administration with a will took about 20 weeks and without a will about 11 weeks (MoJ, FCSQ, Jan–Mar 2026). Whether a valid will exists, and whether the estate bears tax, matters far more to timing than the deceased's postcode.

One further reform bears on complex estates. From 6 April 2026, agricultural property relief and business property relief give 100% relief on the first £2,500,000 of combined qualifying agricultural and business assets per person, and 50% above that, with the allowance transferable between spouses and civil partners up to £5,000,000 per couple (gov.uk, 23 December 2025). Estates holding farms or trading businesses now require careful valuation against this cap, which adds documentary complexity to exactly the kind of estate most exposed to delay.

Original synthesis

A regional pressure model, clearly labelled

Three derived analyses combining public datasets. Every derived figure below is an estimate or model, not an official statistic.

1. The Probate Pressure Model Model

What it does. It classifies English regions on two verifiable axes rather than inventing a single spurious grant-time rank. Axis one is probate demand, proxied by regional mortality. Axis two is delay complexity, proxied by the concentration of inheritance-taxpaying estates that must use the full-account route.

The logic. A region generates the most aggregate delay burden for families when it combines high estate volume with a high share of tax-bearing, document-heavy estates. Because processing is centralised, this does not mean those families wait longer at the court stage than others in the national queue; it means more families in that region face the slower pre-grant route.

Quadrant	Demand (mortality)	Complexity (IHT concentration)	Illustrative regions
High burden, complexity-led	Lower	High	London, South East
High burden, volume-led	Higher	Lower	North East, North West, Wales
Moderate on both	Mid	Mid	Midlands, Yorkshire and The Humber

Inputs: mortality from ONS, Deaths registered in England and Wales, 2024; IHT concentration from HMRC, IHT liabilities statistics, Table 12.8, 2023/24. Limitations: region placement outside London and the South East is directional, inferred from mortality rankings and the known London and South East IHT concentration, not from a full per-region IHT count reproduced here. The model does not measure court processing speed by region, which is not published. It is an estimate of where delay exposure concentrates, not a ranking of official waiting times.

2. Minimum complexity-exposed share Estimate

What it does. It sets a floor on the proportion of estates exposed to the slower full-account route. At least 4.72% of deaths led to an inheritance tax charge in 2023/24, and every one of those estates had to complete the full account before a grant (HMRC, 2023/24). Formula: taxpaying deaths as a share of all deaths, taken directly from HMRC. Limitation: the true population that must engage with inheritance tax reporting is larger than the taxpaying share, because some estates report in full without tax being due; this briefing does not estimate that larger figure, so 4.72% is a conservative floor, not the full exposed population.

3. Two-speed divergence index Observation

What it does. It contrasts the direction of the mean against the direction of the tail over the same window. The mean grant time fell from about 7 weeks in late 2024 to about 5 weeks in early 2026 (MoJ, FCSQ), a fall of roughly 29%. Over a comparable recovery period the count of cases exceeding 12 months rose 177% (Quilter FOI, April 2026). The insight: averages and extremes moved in opposite directions, which is the signature of a system where routine work has been automated and accelerated while complex work has not. Limitation: the two figures use different periodisations (quarterly mean versus financial-year bands) and different sources, so the comparison is directional, not a like-for-like ratio.

Recommended charts

Five visualisations that would make this data citable at a glance. Described, not embedded.

Chart	Data and source	The insight
Mean grant time, quarterly line, 2023–2026	Mean weeks to grant by quarter, MoJ FCSQ	The recovery from the backlog to a stable five weeks
The long tail, before-and-after bars	Cases over 12 months and 21–23 months, 2020/21 vs 2024/25, Quilter FOI of MoJ	The tail grew 177% while the average fell
Grant type gap, horizontal bars	Mean weeks by grant type, MoJ FCSQ Jan–Mar 2026	Letters of administration with a will take about four times as long as probate
IHT concentration map	Taxpaying estates by region, HMRC Table 12.8, 2023/24	Where the full-account, slower estates cluster
Deaths versus tax exposure scatter	Regional mortality (ONS 2024) against IHT concentration (HMRC 2023/24)	The demand-versus-complexity split behind the pressure model

Note The fourth and fifth charts require the full Table 12.8 per-region counts, which sit in the HMRC dataset but are not all reproduced in this briefing; a publisher should pull them directly before charting.

Methodology

Source selection. Primary official statistics were preferred throughout: the Ministry of Justice for timeliness and caseload, HM Revenue and Customs for inheritance tax, and the Office for National Statistics for deaths. A single Tier 2 source, a Freedom of Information analysis by Quilter reported in national media, was used for the long-tail case bands because those specific bands are not published in the routine national statistics; it is labelled as such at every point of use.

Inclusion and exclusion. A figure was included only where the exact number, the period, the geography and a named source could be established. Figures that could not be tied to a source, or that appeared only in unattributed commentary, were excluded. Where a "regional grant time" figure was implied by a secondary source, it was excluded, because no such official statistic exists.

Handling conflicts. Two measures of "how long probate takes" circulate, the five-week court-processing mean and the sixteen-week service expectation. Both are reported, with their different definitions stated, rather than reconciled into one number. Where inheritance tax "receipts" (cash collected, £8.5 billion in 2025/26) and "liabilities" (tax due on estates by year of death, about £7 billion for 2023/24) could be confused, each is labelled by measure.

How estimates were derived. The pressure model is a two-axis classification, not a scored index, precisely because per-region grant times are unpublished and a numeric rank would overstate certainty. The complexity-exposed share is taken directly from HMRC and labelled a conservative floor. Every derived statement carries a model or estimate flag.

Limitations and last update. Probate processing is centralised, so no regional grant-time comparison is possible from official data. Long-tail bands rely on a third-party FOI. Mortality is shown as age-standardised rates and country totals rather than full per-region counts. This briefing was last reviewed in July 2026; all figures are subject to revision by their issuing bodies.

Source quality ranking

Tier	Source	Used for
Tier 1	Ministry of Justice, Family Court Statistics Quarterly	Grant times, application and grant volumes, digital share, caseload
Tier 1	HM Revenue and Customs, Inheritance Tax liabilities statistics	Taxpaying estates, average tax, regional concentration, taxpaying share
Tier 1	HM Revenue and Customs, tax receipts	Inheritance tax receipts trend to 2025/26
Tier 1	Office for National Statistics, Deaths registered in England and Wales	Death volumes and regional mortality rates
Tier 1	gov.uk, HM Revenue and Customs guidance	Inheritance tax thresholds, APR and BPR reform
Tier 2	Quilter, Freedom of Information response from the MoJ	Long-tail case bands (over 12 months, 21–23 months)
Tier 3	MoneyWeek, Money Marketing	Reporting vehicle for the FOI analysis and receipts figure, used only where they attribute a primary source

For journalists and researchers

Most quotable statistics

The mean grant of probate took about 5 weeks after submission, England and Wales, Jan–Mar 2026 (MoJ, FCSQ).
Cases stuck over 12 months rose 177%, from 737 to 2,040, between 2020/21 and 2024/25, England and Wales (Quilter FOI of the MoJ, April 2026).
Cases taking 21 to 23 months rose 131%, from 88 to 203, over the same period (Quilter FOI of the MoJ, April 2026).
Letters of administration with a will took about 20 weeks against about 5 weeks for probate, Jan–Mar 2026, England and Wales (MoJ, FCSQ).
4.72% of UK deaths incurred inheritance tax in 2023/24, the highest since 2006/07 (HMRC).
The South East had 6,310 taxpaying estates and London 4,810 in 2023/24, together close to half of all UK inheritance tax (HMRC, Table 12.8).
Inheritance tax receipts hit a record £8.5 billion in 2025/26 (HMRC receipts).
568,613 deaths were registered in England and Wales in 2024, down 2.2% on 2023 (ONS).

Data limitations

No official regional breakdown of probate grant times exists; processing is centralised.
The mean grant time excludes estate valuation and any pre-grant inheritance tax stage.
Long-tail bands come from a third-party FOI, not routine national statistics.
Receipts and liabilities are different measures and should not be summed or compared directly.
Per-region IHT counts beyond London and the South East are not reproduced here.

Recommended dataset fields

For a downloadable dataset behind this briefing: quarter; mean weeks to grant; application count; grant count; digital application share; digital grant share; open probate caseload; letters of administration with will mean weeks; letters of administration without will mean weeks; cases over 12 months; cases 21–23 months; tax year; taxpaying estates by region; average IHT per estate; IHT receipts by year; deaths registered by region; regional ASMR. Each field paired with source and source date.

Press summary

Probate in England and Wales has largely recovered from its pandemic backlog. The mean time to obtain a grant of probate after a complete application was about five weeks in the first quarter of 2026, down from about seven weeks a year earlier, and clean digital cases were issued in around two weeks. Beneath that recovery, the extreme tail has grown: cases taking more than a year rose 177% between 2020/21 and 2024/25, to 2,040. Delay is driven by complexity, not location. Estates that owe inheritance tax must clear a full account with HMRC before applying, and those estates concentrate in London and the South East. Probate is processed centrally, so no official regional waiting-time table exists; the geography of delay follows the geography of tax and of contested or intestate estates rather than the postcode of the deceased.

Five suggested headlines

Probate recovers to five weeks, but a year-long tail is growing fast
The estates that wait two years: inside the probate long tail
Why there is no probate postcode lottery, and what really drives delay
Tax, not location: where probate delay actually concentrates
A two-speed probate system, in four numbers

Frequently asked questions

How long does probate take in England and Wales in 2026?

The mean time to issue a grant of probate after a complete application was submitted was about five weeks in January to March 2026, similar to the same quarter of 2025 (Ministry of Justice, Family Court Statistics Quarterly, Jan–Mar 2026, England and Wales). Clean digital applications not stopped for queries were issued in around two weeks on average across 2025. These figures cover only the court stage, not estate valuation or any inheritance tax settled first.

Are probate waiting times getting better or worse?

Both, on different measures. The mean grant time fell from about seven weeks in October to December 2024 to about five weeks by early 2026 (Ministry of Justice, Family Court Statistics Quarterly, England and Wales). Over the same recovery, the number of cases running beyond twelve months rose 177%, from 737 in 2020/21 to 2,040 in 2024/25 (Quilter Freedom of Information analysis of the Ministry of Justice, reported April 2026). Routine estates are faster; the complex tail is longer.

Is there a probate postcode lottery by region?

Not in the way the phrase implies. Since a 2019 reform, probate applications in England and Wales have been processed through a single centralised service centre rather than local registries, so the Ministry of Justice does not publish grant times by region. There is no official regional league table. Differences families experience are driven mainly by estate complexity and whether inheritance tax is due, not by where the deceased lived.

Why do some probate cases take a year or more?

Long cases cluster around complexity. Cases taking more than twelve months rose to 2,040 in 2024/25, up 177% since 2020/21, and cases taking 21 to 23 months reached 203 (Quilter Freedom of Information analysis of the Ministry of Justice, reported April 2026, England and Wales). Common causes include missing or disputed wills, intestacy, estates that owe inheritance tax, foreign assets, and applications stopped for further information.

Does inheritance tax make probate slower?

Yes, because tax generally has to be dealt with first. Where inheritance tax is due, the estate must be reported in full to HM Revenue and Customs and the tax paid or arranged before a grant can issue. 4.72% of UK deaths incurred an inheritance tax charge in 2023/24, the highest share since 2006/07 (HMRC, Inheritance Tax liabilities statistics, updated 30 July 2026). These full-account estates carry the heaviest documentary burden and dominate the longest waits.

Which regions have the most inheritance-taxpaying estates?

London and the South East. In 2023/24 the South East had 6,310 taxpaying estates and London 4,810, and together they accounted for close to half of all inheritance tax due across the United Kingdom (HMRC, Inheritance Tax liabilities statistics, Table 12.8, 2023/24). Because these estates must use the slower full-account route, delay exposure concentrates where tax-bearing estates concentrate, even though the court stage itself is processed centrally.

How many people die each year in England and Wales?

There were 568,613 deaths registered in England and Wales in 2024, a fall of 2.2% from 581,363 in 2023 (Office for National Statistics, Deaths registered in England and Wales, 2024). The North East had the highest age-standardised mortality rate of any English region and London the lowest. Death volume sets the underlying number of estates that pass through the probate system each year.

Why is the "16 weeks" figure different from the five-week average?

They measure different things. Five weeks is the mean court processing time after a complete application is submitted (Ministry of Justice, Family Court Statistics Quarterly). Sixteen weeks is the wider service expectation families are commonly told to allow, and the benchmark used in the April 2026 Freedom of Information analysis. About one in eight estates took longer than six months to clear probate in 2024/25 (Quilter analysis of Ministry of Justice data), which is why both figures can hold at once.

Do letters of administration take longer than probate?

Considerably longer. In January to March 2026 a grant of probate took a mean of about five weeks, while letters of administration with a will took about twenty weeks and without a will about eleven weeks (Ministry of Justice, Family Court Statistics Quarterly, Jan–Mar 2026, England and Wales). Whether a valid will exists is one of the strongest predictors of how long the grant stage takes.

Is probate the same across the whole United Kingdom?

No. This briefing covers England and Wales. Scotland uses confirmation rather than a grant of probate and operates under separate succession law, and Northern Ireland has its own system. The Ministry of Justice timeliness statistics and the centralised processing described here apply to England and Wales, so figures should not be read across to the other UK nations.

About Fairchild Oldfield

The Fairchild Oldfield team brings together estate planning, tax and client care, working with families across England and Wales. This briefing draws only on named public sources, each linked at its point of use.

Fairchild Oldfield are estate planning specialists and will writers, not a firm of solicitors. This research briefing is general information and factual data reporting, not legal, tax or financial advice.

Important: This is a research briefing providing general information and factual data reporting only. It is not legal, tax or financial advice, and reading it does not create a professional relationship. It describes the law and statistics of England and Wales; other UK jurisdictions differ. All figures are attributed to named sources, are current as at July 2026, and are subject to revision by the issuing bodies. Derived figures are labelled as models or estimates and are not official statistics. Before acting, many people choose to seek advice from a suitably qualified professional who can consider their individual circumstances.