Do you actually need probate?
There is no single threshold. Whether probate is needed depends on what the person owned, and how they owned it — and each bank and provider applies its own rules.
Answer a few questions about the estate and we'll tell you honestly whether probate is likely needed.
Free. England & Wales.
Check if probate is needed — free→You usually need probate when the person who died owned property in their sole name, or held money above a bank's own limit. You usually don't when everything was owned jointly with someone who survives them, or when sole balances are small.
There is no universal threshold — each institution sets its own, which is why the honest answer starts with what the estate actually contains.
When probate is usually NOT needed
Most of the situations where probate isn't needed share one feature: the asset already knows where it's going.
A house owned as joint tenants, or a joint bank account, passes automatically to the surviving owner by survivorship — outside the will, outside probate. Property owned as tenants in common is different — that share is part of the estate. See our guide to tenants in common and death.
Below a limit each bank or provider sets for itself, many will release funds against a death certificate and a signed declaration, without a grant.
Anything already inside a trust passes under the trust's own terms.
Most are paid at the provider's discretion directly to the nominated person — they usually never enter the estate at all. This is also why who gets your pension when you die matters before a death, not just after.
When probate usually IS needed
Three situations account for most straightforward grants.
Or their share as a tenant in common. No buyer, and no Land Registry transfer, will proceed without a grant.
Once a balance passes a bank's own line, the bank will freeze the account until it sees a grant.
Registrars and platforms almost always require a grant to sell or transfer.
There's a fourth, quieter trigger: an institution simply insists. Some providers require a grant regardless of value.
Their rules, their call — which brings this back to §1: the answer lives in the specific estate, not in a table.
The check
Three steps, a few minutes, an honest answer.
property, accounts, investments, and how each is owned. Rough figures are fine.
survivorship, small-balance practice, and what institutions typically require at each level.
probate likely needed, likely not needed, or genuinely borderline, and in each case what to do next.
If the answer is "not needed," we say so, plainly, and you've lost nothing. The point of the check is the answer — not the sale.
If you do need it
Probate is a process, and the first hours decide how heavy it becomes.
If the check says a grant is likely, the Executor's First Hour — £179, one-off — turns the first overwhelming week into a sequence: what to secure, who to notify, what to gather for the application, in what order, for this estate.
No subscription, no ongoing commitment.
Where the boundary is reached, Valoren refers.
The free check above gives you the answer either way — that stays the point. But when the answer is yes and the estate behind it is heavy, there are two routes to having it done, and we are straightforward about which one is ours.
Probate, honestly answered.
You don't have to guess.
Check if probate is needed — free→Informational, not advice. England & Wales only.