Do you need probate if there is a will?

No. Having a will does not remove the need for probate. This is probably the single most common misunderstanding in estate administration, so it is worth being blunt about it up front. A will decides who inherits and who is in charge. Probate, more precisely a grant of probate, is the legal document that proves that person's authority to banks, HM Land Registry and other institutions. Whether a grant is needed depends on what the person owned and how they owned it, not on whether they left a will.

So the honest answer to "do I need probate if there is a will?" is: quite possibly, and the will itself will not tell you. If the estate includes a house in the deceased's sole name, or accounts above a bank's release threshold, a grant will almost certainly be needed, will or no will. If everything passed jointly to a surviving spouse, it may not be. For a personalised answer, our free do I need probate checker asks about the assets rather than the paperwork, because the assets are what decide it. This guide, and everything on this site, covers England and Wales and is general information, not legal advice.

What a will actually changes

A will does three things that matter here. It names executors, the people legally responsible for administering the estate. It says who inherits, overriding the intestacy rules that would otherwise apply. And it can deal with practical wishes such as funeral preferences and guardianship of children.

What it does not do is act as a key to the deceased's assets. A bank faced with a request to close a £60,000 account does not take the will at face value; anyone could present a document claiming to be the latest will. What the bank wants is a grant of representation: a court-sealed document from the probate registry confirming that this will is the valid last will and that these executors have authority to act. That is what "getting probate" means, and gov.uk's overview of applying for probate makes the same point: you may need it whether or not there is a will.

Where the will earns its keep is in making the process smoother and putting the right people in charge:

• With a will, the named executors apply for a grant of probate. Their authority technically dates from the death itself; the grant confirms it.
• Without a will, the estate is intestate. The closest relatives, in a strict legal order, apply for letters of administration and are called administrators. Their authority only begins when the grant is issued, and the intestacy rules, not anyone's wishes, decide who inherits.
• With a will but no available executor, for example where the sole executor has died or renounces, a beneficiary applies for letters of administration with will annexed. The will still controls who inherits; only the person applying changes.

All three documents do the same practical job. The differences are who applies and what set of rules governs the application, set out in the Non-Contentious Probate Rules 1987.

When probate is still needed, will or not

Because the trigger is the assets, the same tests apply with or without a will. In brief, a grant is usually needed where the estate includes:

• Property or land in the deceased's sole name, or held as tenants in common. HM Land Registry will not transfer or allow a sale of a solely owned property without a grant.
• Bank or building society accounts above the institution's own threshold. Each bank sets its own limit for releasing funds without a grant, commonly somewhere between £5,000 and £50,000, and applies it per institution.
• Shares, investment accounts or certain insurance and pension payments where the provider insists on a grant before paying out.

And a grant is often not needed where the estate consists of jointly held property and accounts passing by survivorship, small balances under each bank's threshold, or cash and personal possessions. Some assets sit outside the will altogether: pensions and life policies written under a nomination or in trust are paid directly to the named beneficiary without a grant, and assets already held in a trust pass under the trust's terms, not the will. The asset-by-asset detail, thresholds, survivorship rules, and the edge cases, belongs in our main guide to whether you need probate at all, and if the person who died was your husband, wife or civil partner there is a dedicated walkthrough in do you need probate when a spouse dies. The point for this article is simply that none of those tests mentions a will.

The original will: why it matters so much

Here is where the will moves from background document to centre stage. If a grant of probate is needed, the application must include the original signed will and any codicils (later signed amendments). This applies even to online applications: you apply digitally, then post the original will to HMCTS. The registry keeps it, and the will becomes a public document once the grant issues.

Practical consequences follow from that:

1. Find the original before you do anything else. Check the deceased's papers, ask the solicitor or will writer who drafted it, check any will storage service, and search the National Will Register if in doubt. HM Courts and Tribunals Service also stores some wills lodged for safekeeping.
2. Do not unbind, staple, mark or attach anything to it. Registries scrutinise wills for signs that pages were removed or documents were once attached. Even an innocent paperclip mark can prompt questions and delay.
3. A photocopy is not normally accepted. If only a copy exists, you can apply for an order to prove the copy under rule 54 of the Non-Contentious Probate Rules 1987, supported by evidence of what happened to the original. There is a legal presumption that a will last known to be in the deceased's possession, and now missing, was destroyed by them with the intention of revoking it, so you will need to rebut that. It is doable, but slower and far from automatic.
4. Send it by tracked post and keep copies. The original is irreplaceable in the literal sense. Take clear photographs or scans before it goes anywhere.

What the grant costs and how long it takes

The application fee is identical whether the estate has a will or not: £526 where the estate is over £5,000 (the fee rose to this level on 13 July 2026), and no fee where the estate is £5,000 or less, per the official probate fees guidance. Sealed copies of the grant cost £2 each when ordered with the application; order several, because each bank, registrar and broker will want to see one.

On timing, the latest official Family Court and probate statistics (January to March 2026) put the mean at 6.4 weeks from submission to grant; applying digitally, as 82.6% of applicants now do, brought that down to 4.5 weeks, against 16.5 weeks on paper. Waits vary, and an estate with a lost will or an inheritance tax account to file will take longer. Our probate timeline estimator gives a personalised estimate, and how long does probate take covers the full journey from death to distribution.

Will versus no will: a side-by-side summary

	Valid will	No will (intestacy)
Is a grant needed?	Depends on the assets	Depends on the assets (same tests)
Document applied for	Grant of probate	Letters of administration
Who applies	Executors named in the will	Next of kin in the legal order of priority
Who inherits	Whoever the will says	Fixed intestacy rules (spouse takes the first £322,000 plus half the rest where there are children)
Application fee	£526 over £5,000; free at or below	Same
Original document needed	Yes, the original signed will	No will to send; other evidence of entitlement instead

Read across the first row: the will changes almost everything about who and how, and nothing about whether.

So what should you actually do?

If you are holding a will and wondering whether to apply, work through it in this order. First, list the assets and how each was owned, sole or joint, and check what each institution requires; that determines whether a grant is needed at all, and our do I need probate checker will do the sorting for you. Second, locate and protect the original will. Third, confirm who the executors are and whether they are willing to act. Only then start the application itself; the practical role of the person doing all this is covered in our guide for executors.

If the estate is straightforward, many people handle probate themselves. If it involves a property sale, inheritance tax, a lost will, or family tension, it is often worth getting help. We do not provide legal services ourselves, but we can connect you with a vetted probate specialist for a no-obligation conversation about what the estate actually needs, and our free tools will tell you in minutes whether a grant is likely to be required at all. Start with the do I need probate checker.