The headline figure published by HM Courts and Tribunals Service is that a digital probate application is processed in approximately sixteen weeks, and a paper application in approximately fifteen weeks. Both numbers are accurate in the sense that they describe the mean processing time across applications that completed within the published reporting period. Neither number describes the experience of any individual applicant, and the distance between the headline and the experience is the source of most of the public complaint.
What the clock includes
The published timing begins on the day the registry receives a complete application — meaning the application form, the inheritance tax position (either an IHT421 from HMRC or a confirmation that no IHT is payable), the will if one exists, and the court fee. The clock does not include the time spent assembling the application, the time spent waiting for HMRC to issue the IHT421, or the time spent waiting for a stopped application to be unstopped.
These three exclusions are where most of the real time goes. A complex estate that requires a full IHT400 account waits several weeks for HMRC to process the account before the IHT421 is issued and the probate application can be lodged. A stopped application — typically held for a missing document, a clarification request, or a queried valuation — restarts the clock when the issue is resolved. A simple non-taxable estate with a clean digital application is the case the published timing describes; a complex taxable estate with even one query is not.
Why digital is now slower than paper, occasionally
For most of 2023 and 2024, digital applications were materially faster than paper. In late 2024, that gap closed. In some months of 2025, paper applications have been processed marginally faster than digital. The cause is structural rather than tactical: the digital route is now used for the easy cases, the paper route disproportionately for the cases requiring solicitor handling, and the solicitor-handled cases tend to arrive complete. The simplicity of the case, in other words, has migrated to the digital channel; the discipline of the application has migrated to the paper channel.
The practical lesson, for an executor choosing route, is that the digital channel is still appropriate for straightforward estates with confident applicants, and the paper channel via a solicitor remains appropriate for any estate where the applicant is uncertain about completeness.
What a stopped application actually feels like
An application is stopped, in HMCTS terminology, when the registry has a question and cannot proceed without an answer. The applicant is notified by email or letter; the question must be answered in writing; the response is queued behind whatever else the registry is processing; the application then re-enters the main queue. A first stoppage routinely adds four to six weeks. A second stoppage adds another four to six. An application stopped three times is rare but not unheard of, and produces total elapsed time well beyond any published average.
The single most effective mitigation is to ensure the application is complete and consistent before submission. The leading cause of stoppages is mismatched valuations between the IHT account and the probate application, followed by missing or incorrectly executed wills, followed by ambiguity in executor appointments. None of these is unfixable; all of them are easier to prevent than to resolve.