Scotland does not grant probate, it grants confirmation
This page covers Scotland. Scots succession law is a separate legal system with its own courts, forms, vocabulary and fees, and very little of it carries across the border. If the person who died was domiciled in England or Wales, none of what follows applies and you want our guide to the grant of probate and letters of administration and the probate hub instead.
In Scotland the court authority to gather in and distribute a deceased person's estate is called confirmation. The Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service describes it as a legal document from the court giving the executor authority to uplift the deceased's money and property from whoever holds it, and to administer and distribute it according to law. It is granted by the sheriff court, not by a probate registry, and the application is made on form C1, an inventory of everything the person owned.
What follows is the process end to end, as general information rather than legal or financial advice. The related questions of whether you need confirmation at all, how legal rights limit what a Scottish will can do and how the costs compare across the two systems each have their own guide. Our probate timeline estimator sketches the stages of a full administration; the court step below is only one of them.
Step one: work out who is entitled to be executor
This is where Scottish and English terminology diverge first. Scotland has no administrators. It has two kinds of executor.
- Executor nominate. Named in the will, taking authority from the will itself. No court appointment, and ordinarily no bond of caution.
- Executor dative. Appointed by the court, because there was no will or the will names nobody able and willing to act. Appointment is by petition to the sheriff court, a distinct legal step that must be completed before the confirmation application is lodged. SCTS flags this as an additional stage and recommends legal advice for it.
An executor dative will usually also need a bond of caution (pronounced "kay-shun"), an insurance policy protecting the estate against someone applying for confirmation who is not entitled to, and against an executor failing to distribute according to law. There is one useful carve out: where the estate is within the £36,000 small estate limit and the sheriff clerk's office prepares the inventory, SCTS confirms that no bond is needed, a change effective from 4 March 2016. If a solicitor prepares the inventory instead, the bond is still required. Our guide to Scottish intestacy covers what happens to the estate itself when there is no will.
Step two: value everything, then find the £36,000 line
The inventory lists all the deceased's property at the date of death: money, houses, land, shares, personal possessions. Two rules about the arithmetic catch people out. Debts are not deducted when working out which route you are on, so funeral expenses, utility bills and an outstanding mortgage do not reduce the figure. And bank and building society balances must include interest accrued to the date of death. The resulting gross figure decides everything that follows.
| Small estate | Large estate | |
|---|---|---|
| Total value of money and property | £36,000 or less | Over £36,000 |
| Can the sheriff clerk prepare the inventory? | Yes, by appointment at any sheriff clerk's office | No. SCTS is prohibited from assisting |
| Bond of caution where there is no will | Not required if the sheriff clerk prepares it | Usually required, plus the dative petition |
| Court fee on the inventory | None | Depends on value, see below |
The small estate route is genuinely assisted. You book an appointment with a sheriff clerk (it does not have to be the court for the area where the deceased lived, if a different one is more convenient), take the completed small estate checklist along, and the clerk fills in the inventory with you. Above £36,000 that help stops entirely. SCTS states it is prohibited from assisting large estate applicants and recommends legal advice, noting that where mistakes are made the executor is legally responsible and the remedies are few and potentially expensive.
Step three: form C1, and where it goes next
HMRC publishes the form and its guidance notes as Inheritance Tax: confirmation (C1). It is a dual purpose document, used by the court to issue confirmation and by HMRC to assess inheritance tax. For deaths on or after 1 January 2022 a revised C1 applies and forms C5(2006), C5(SE)(2006) and IHT217 are no longer required, the Scottish counterpart of the excepted estate reform that abolished IHT205 elsewhere in the UK.
Where the C1 goes depends on the tax position, and getting this order wrong is the most common procedural error:
- Excepted estate. Send the C1 straight to the appropriate sheriff clerk or Commissary Office. HMRC's guidance notes are blunt about this: do not send form C1 for excepted estates to HMRC Trusts and Estates.
- Not an excepted estate. Send a copy of the C1 together with form IHT400 to HMRC Trusts and Estates. Only when HMRC writes back confirming the inheritance tax position do you send that letter, plus the original C1, to the sheriff clerk or Commissary Office. Any inheritance tax due has to be paid, or shown not to be payable, before confirmation can be issued.
The excepted estate tests are UK-wide, because inheritance tax is a UK tax. Broadly, per GOV.UK, an estate is excepted where it is below the £325,000 nil-rate band, or £650,000 or less with a full unused threshold transferred from a spouse or civil partner who died first, or under £3 million where everything passes to a UK-domiciled spouse, civil partner or qualifying charity. Our guide to the inheritance tax threshold in Scotland covers the tax side.
Step four: which court, and what to take
Jurisdiction runs on domicile at the date of death: the sheriff court of the district in which the deceased was domiciled. The Commissary Office at 27 Chambers Street, Edinburgh handles it instead where the deceased was domiciled in the Edinburgh sheriff court district, where they were not domiciled in the UK, or where they had no fixed or known domicile beyond being domiciled in Scotland. Confirmation is only competent if the inventory contains at least one item of money or property in Scotland.
For a large estate lodged without a solicitor, SCTS requires the death certificate (the original, not a copy), the original will or a court extract if it has been registered, the court fee, and proof of identity from two original documents, or three pieces of documentary evidence if you apply by post.
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The court fee
Scottish confirmation fees are set by the Sheriff Court Fees Order and are banded by the value of the estate for which confirmation is required. The current figures, from The Sheriff Court Fees Order 2026 and the SCTS fee tables, apply from 1 April 2026.
| Value of estate for confirmation | Fee for receiving and examining the inventory |
|---|---|
| Not exceeding £50,000 | No fee |
| Over £50,000, not exceeding £250,000 | £351 |
| Exceeding £250,000 | £705 |
Certificates of confirmation are extra. Banks, insurers and registrars generally want one each so they can release funds in parallel, and they cost £10 each when ordered at the same time as the inventory, or £23 for the first ordered afterwards (which includes a search fee) plus £10 for each one after that. A certified extract of the confirmation and will is £33 with the inventory. Fee exemption is not available on a confirmation application, save where the estate is exempt from inheritance tax under sections 153A, 154 or 155A of the Inheritance Tax Act 1984, and even then the certificate and copy fees remain payable.
Worked example: a large but excepted estate in Dundee
Mhairi and Ewan Strachan are named jointly in their mother Elspeth's will, so both are executors nominate. Elspeth was widowed and domiciled in Dundee. Her estate:
- Flat in Broughty Ferry: £215,000
- Savings accounts, including interest to the date of death: £96,000
- Investment ISA: £41,000
- Car and household contents: £8,000
- Gross value for confirmation: £360,000
Elspeth's husband left everything to her, so her full transferred nil-rate band is available and the estate is comfortably inside the £650,000 excepted estate ceiling. That shapes the whole route. There is no IHT400, and the C1 does not go anywhere near HMRC. It goes directly to Dundee Sheriff Court.
At £360,000 this is firmly a large estate, so no sheriff clerk will help with the inventory and the pair instruct a solicitor. Neither needs a bond of caution, because both are executors nominate under a valid will. The court fee on the inventory is £705. They order six certificates of confirmation with the application, one each for the two banks, the ISA provider, the car's registered keeper transfer, the buildings insurer and one spare, at £10 apiece, so £60. Court costs come to £765, on top of whatever their solicitor charges separately.
Note what is absent: no percentage of the estate taken by the court, and no separate inheritance tax account. Note what remains. The executors must still account for legal rights out of the moveable estate before distributing, a Scots law obligation with no English parallel, covered in the legal rights guide.
Where Scottish applications tend to stall
- Assuming the £36,000 figure is net. It is not. A flat with a large mortgage still counts at its gross value, so estates that feel modest are routinely large estates for procedural purposes.
- Sending the C1 to HMRC when the estate is excepted. That does not speed anything up, it puts the form in the wrong queue.
- Bond of caution for an executor dative. The market for these bonds is thin, so allow time. The small estate exemption where the sheriff clerk prepares the inventory matters for exactly this reason.
- Copies instead of originals. The death certificate and the will must be produced as originals or, for a registered will, as a court extract.
- Under-ordering certificates. At £10 each with the inventory against £23 plus £10 each afterwards, ordering one or two spare is the cheaper mistake.
SCTS does not publish a standard turnaround time for issuing confirmation, and it varies by court and workload, so treat any single figure you see quoted with caution. In practice the long pole in a Scottish administration is the valuation stage and, where there is tax to pay, HMRC's response, rather than the court itself.
Getting help
For a small estate the sheriff clerk route is designed for lay executors and is worth using before you pay anyone. The Scottish Government's collection on what to do after a death in Scotland and the summary on mygov.scot are the right starting points. Above £36,000 the court cannot assist you and the executor carries personal responsibility for errors. If you are facing a large Scottish estate, whether as an executor nominate reading a will for the first time or as a relative who needs appointing as executor dative, we can put you in touch with a specialist in Scottish executry who can take the inventory off your hands. Mapping the stages with the probate timeline estimator first will show which parts of the year ahead are court work and which are not.