Can I do my own probate in the UK?

Yes. In most straightforward estates, you can apply for probate yourself and administer the estate without a solicitor.

The law allows it. The forms are public. The probate registries and HMRC are used to dealing directly with executors, not just professionals. Many people do this every year for a parent's or partner's estate, and manage it well.

That said, "you can" is not the same as "you always should". Some estates really are better handed to a solicitor. The honest answer is that it depends on the estate, not on whether you feel up to it.

This article walks through how to tell which kind of estate you have, what the work actually involves, how long it takes, and when a solicitor is the wiser choice.

A quick note on terminology. In England and Wales it is called probate. In Scotland the equivalent is called confirmation, granted by the Sheriff Court. Northern Ireland has its own probate process. The principles below apply across all three, and we flag the differences where they matter.

First, do you even need probate?

Before anything else, it is worth checking whether probate is needed at all. Sometimes it is not.

You will usually need a grant of probate (or confirmation in Scotland) if the person who died held:

• A property in their sole name
• Bank or savings accounts above the bank's own threshold, which is commonly somewhere between £5,000 and £50,000 depending on the institution
• Shares or investments in their sole name

You often will not need probate if the estate was made up only of:

• Assets owned jointly, which usually pass automatically to the surviving owner
• Pensions or life insurance with a named beneficiary
• Small amounts below each bank's threshold
• Cash and personal possessions

So the first practical step is to list what the person owned and how it was held. If nothing needs a grant, you may be able to close the estate without applying for probate at all.

What makes an estate "straightforward"

This is the question that really matters. A straightforward estate is one where the process is administrative, not a matter of legal judgement. In that situation, DIY is a reasonable choice.

An estate is usually straightforward when most or all of the following are true:

• There is a valid will, and you are the named executor. Or there is no will, and you are the clear next of kin entitled to apply.
• The estate is below the inheritance tax threshold. The nil-rate band is £325,000. Many estates fall under this, and most estates do not owe inheritance tax once the usual exemptions are applied.
• Everyone agrees. No one is contesting the will or the way the estate is being shared out.
• The assets are simple. UK bank accounts, a home, some savings or investments. Nothing held in a trust.
• Everything is in the UK. No property or assets held abroad.
• There is no business to deal with. No trading company, farm, or partnership that needs specialist valuation.

If that sounds like the estate you are dealing with, you are in the group that can genuinely do this yourself.

Two points are worth adding here. First, being under the inheritance tax threshold is not the only route to a simpler process. An estate can also qualify for the simpler reporting where everything passes to a surviving spouse or civil partner, or to charity, even if the value is higher. Second, "straightforward" is about the shape of the estate, not the size of your grief. Plenty of capable people find probate confusing simply because it is unfamiliar, not because their estate is complex.

The real steps involved

Here is what the work actually looks like. None of it is beyond an organised person. The difficulty is rarely any single step. It is holding all of them in your head at once, in the right order, while you are tired.

1. Register the death and get certificates. You register the death within five days in England and Wales, and within eight days in Scotland. Order several certified copies of the death certificate. You will need to send them to banks and other organisations, and originals get returned slowly.

2. Tell the right people. In England, Wales, and Scotland you can use the Tell Us Once service to notify several government departments at once. Northern Ireland does not have this, so you notify each department separately. You will also need to contact banks, pension providers, insurers, and utility companies yourself.

3. Value the estate. List every asset at its value on the date of death. Property, bank accounts, investments, vehicles, possessions, and any money owed to the person. Then list the debts, such as a mortgage, loans, and funeral costs. The difference is the value of the estate. This step takes patience, because you are often waiting on statements and valuations.

4. Sort out inheritance tax. Even when no tax is due, you usually still report the estate's value. For most straightforward estates this is now handled within the online (or postal) probate application rather than a separate paper form. If tax is due, it generally has to be paid within six months of the end of the month of death, and at least some of it before probate is granted.

5. Apply for the grant. In England and Wales you complete a PA1P if there is a will, or a PA1A if there is not, and apply online or by post. In Scotland you apply for confirmation using form C1. You send the application, the original will if there is one, a death certificate, and the fee. In England and Wales the application fee is £526 for estates worth more than £5,000, with no fee below that.

6. Confirm the details. You confirm the information is true through a statement of truth. For most applications you no longer need to attend anywhere in person.

7. Receive the grant and collect the assets. Once the grant arrives, you send certified copies to each bank and organisation. They release the funds. It is worth opening a dedicated executor bank account to keep estate money separate and clean.

8. Pay the debts. Funeral costs come first, then other debts. You must clear known debts before you pay anything to the people inheriting. This matters, because an executor can be held personally responsible for getting this wrong.

9. Prepare simple accounts and distribute. Set out what came in, what went out, and who received what. Pay the people who inherit, and keep records. Simple accounts are not always legally required, but they protect you and reassure the family.

How long it realistically takes

It is fair to set expectations honestly. Probate is not quick, whoever handles it.

Two timelines are worth separating.

The first is getting the grant itself. In England and Wales, once you have applied, the grant commonly takes somewhere in the region of four to sixteen weeks to be issued. In Scotland, confirmation is often issued within about four to eight weeks. These are typical ranges, not promises, and they move with the registries' workload. In England & Wales, applying online is usually quicker than by post, but it all depends on what documents the Probate Registry need to see and whether they have any queries about the will or who is applying.

The second is the whole administration, from the death through to the final payment to beneficiaries. For a straightforward estate this commonly takes the better part of a year. Nine to twelve months is a realistic expectation.

Much of that time is spent waiting rather than working. Waiting on valuations, on the grant, on banks to release funds, on a property to sell. There is also a convention known as the executor's year, which gives you twelve months before the people entitled to the residue of the estate can insist on being paid.

So doing your own probate rarely makes the estate slower. In many cases it can be quicker, because nothing is sitting in someone else's queue. What DIY asks of you is not extra months. It is attention and follow-through.

When a solicitor is genuinely the better choice

A solicitor is not a fallback for people who are not clever enough to manage. They are the right professional for a genuinely harder job, and there are estates where using one is the sensible, responsible decision.

Consider a solicitor when any of these apply:

• Inheritance tax is due, or the estate is over the threshold and complex. Once you are into a full inheritance tax account with reliefs and calculations, the judgement calls become real, and mistakes are costly.
• Someone is contesting the will, or there is a serious family disagreement about who should get what. This is legal territory, not administrative.
• There are assets abroad, or the person lived outside the UK. Different countries and tax rules come into play.
• Assets are held in a trust. Trusts need specialist handling.
• There is a business, a farm, or agricultural land that needs proper valuation and relief advice.
• A beneficiary cannot be found, or the estate is otherwise tangled in a way that needs a court's involvement.

There is also a quieter reason people choose a solicitor, and it is a valid one. A solicitor carries the responsibility. If you would rather hand the whole thing over and not hold the personal liability yourself, paying for that peace of mind is a reasonable choice, especially at a difficult time. Solicitor fees for probate commonly run into a few thousand pounds, sometimes charged as a percentage of the estate. For a complex estate, that can be money well spent.

The honest position is simple. Solicitors are the right tool for complex, contested, high-value, or cross-border estates. For a straightforward estate, they are often more than you need.

Where software fits, between doing it alone and paying a solicitor

For a long time there were really only two options. Do everything yourself with GOV.UK pages, printed forms, and a spreadsheet. Or hand it all to a solicitor and pay for the whole service.

Both have a genuine drawback for a straightforward estate.

Pure DIY is free, but you are building the system as you go. GOV.UK explains what probate is. It does not tell you whether you, specifically, need it, or what your next step is today. A spreadsheet has no idea when your figures cross an important threshold. The real cost of DIY is not the effort. It is the risk of a form coming back rejected, or a value being questioned months later, and the quiet worry of not knowing whether you have missed something.

A solicitor removes that worry, but for a simple estate you may be paying a professional rate for what is, in truth, administrative work.

Software sits in between. The idea is that you stay the person doing the work, keeping control and keeping the cost low, but the guesswork is taken off you. A good tool tells you what to do next, keeps track of where the estate has got to, works out whether tax is due, and prepares the actual forms rather than just describing them.

This is where EstateCopilot fits. It guides you through the whole process across England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, works out your inheritance tax position, fills in the probate forms for you to check and sign, and keeps everyone who needs to know in the loop. It is software, not a law firm, so for the complex estates above it will point you towards a solicitor rather than pretend otherwise. For a straightforward estate, it aims to give you a solicitor's structure and confidence, for one fixed fee, on your own timeline.

If and when you feel ready to make a start, you can take a look at how EstateCopilot works and decide whether it suits your situation. There is no rush. The estate will still be there tomorrow, and so will we.