Probate Registry Wills

I ordered one on 28th August that has arrived today, which I would be very happy with at any time, considering that my order went in just before a Bank Holiday weekend.

I think their service has been pretty good recently, despite Covid-19. It was all a mess when they first reduced the price, however I think that was because we all went a bit mad ordering wills that we had been managing without for decades?

 

I ordered a 1909 will on 24 Aug, estimated delivery 8 Sep with a promise of a notification when it was available to download. On checking my account yesterday I found the will had been ready to download on 27 Aug - but no notification. So it's worth checking after a couple of days.

 

Service still seems to be rather variable. I ordered 5 wills on 17/8/20 and all were given an estimated delivery date of 1/9/20. So far 4 of them have been delivered; 3 on 20/8/20; 1 on 11/9/20. One to go!

 

I ordered a will on Friday morning (18th Sep) and, to my astonishment, it arrived on Sunday morning (20th Sep)!

I am still waiting for two ordered on 15th Sep though, perhaps because they are from an earlier date?

My experience, before and after lockdown, has always been that the earlier the date of the will, the longer it takes. The one that was expressed to me was from 2008, so maybe the very recent ones have an automated delivery process, with older ones needing more human intervention?

 

Noting your comments on the GRO maintaining their turnaround on PDFs, I have an experience with the last one I ordered that not only confirms this, but may break some sort of record ... I ordered a PDF of an ancestor's death on 30 Sep. My order confirmation email is timed at 14:21 on that date. The email telling me that the PDF was ready to download was timed at 17:57 on the same day. 3 hours, 36 mins!

 

I'd like to post a query, andthat might help me find a will?? My Wife's forebear John Arnold I found in the National Probate Calendar and I entered the details or some of them in the Find a Will search form at Gov.uk, and nothing was returned. Does this mean that although probate was granted, the will was not registered? Or is the search not working as it should?

Thanks, Barrie

 

It seems something wasn’t working. Did you find the will in the probate calendar at either Ancestry or FMP? If so, it should show up at Find a Will, as they hold the same calendar, though you do occasionally find minor differences with annotations.

 

There's another thread with a more recent discussion of the search and its peculiarities - have you looked at that?
Going back from the end, you may find some help or things to try - though it is rather confusing:
No boundaries / Wills and probate / Problems with the probate website

The search seems to be using a transcription of the whole text of the calendars. (I'm assuming it hasn't changed recently.) While it seems to be pretty good, there must be some errors in it however it was done (my guess is OCR plus human checking). But, as Pauline says, if you've found the calendar entry then it's in there for the search to find.

The commonest problem is with the year - it must be after 1857, and while the search box asks for year of death, it should say year of probate, as that's how it's used. Can you tell us the place of death/residence and year of probate?

 

Yes, I found it on Ancestry.

Well I just searched with Surname = ARNOLD, Forename = John, Died = 1878, and still no matches. Perhaps I should leave out date of death??

 

No, that didn't work: Year of death is REQUIRED. So I left out his forename. Too many matches. So then I went back and added Year of Probate = 1880: Seven pages of matches, ALL in probate year 1878, first page contained the start of ARNOLD in that year, subsequent ones contained names quite different (second page started with CHESSHIRE!) Maybe I should start from scratch.

 

Still no luck: I entered Surname = ARNOLD, Year of Death = 1878, Year of Probate = 1880, Month of Probate = 11, Day of Probate = 05 (all correct as checked on FMP) and got two pages from the Calendar, again both for 1878 not 1880, the first contained ARNOLDs, the second MOUAT!

 

It can be very frustrating, but you do sometimes have to enter the date of probate when it asks for the date of death. Another option, if you can see the entry that you want in the probate calendar on Ancestry, is just to complete the order using the details you can see there, even if the wills online search doesn't find it. That will usually work. I say usually only because it is possible that the copy of the calendar held by HMCTS has been updated since it was digitised by Ancestry, but I've never had a problem.

 

Sorry, I didn't see Stuart's comment. Yes, it did work. I got the right page.

0 results returned
I tried this, as I just mentioned in nother post, I got the right entry with what looks like a folio number. I put in all the details including the folio number, and got a response saying '0 results returned' and there's no link to my basket. Do I need to lie about his year of death and put in his year of probate again, and if so, what do I need to put in (if anything) for his month and date of death?

 

OK, Presumably 1880 is an 'older will.' By following your advice, I had found the probate calendar entry, and now I was searcing for the will. Are you saying, these have not been digitized (and maybe not indexed?) but also, enter as little information as possible here also. That makes good sense. I will try again with fewer details.

 

If you fill in all the boxes on the right of the image, and then click "add to basket", it takes you back to the same results page you saw before - which still says "0 results". There now should be a big green headline near the top saying "added to basket", and a new menu item at the top of the page for "my basket(1)". That happens even if you are not logged in, though you do need to be logged into an account to complete and pay for the order.

 

I meant that you can place an order using the details from the probate calendar on Ancestry WITHOUT finding anything in a 'Find a Will' search ... as Stuart has explained.