Process for obtaining Grants of Probate and Letters of Administration to move online in September 2020

This September will see a significant change in the way applications for Grants of Probate and Letters of Administration are made in the Courts Service Probate Office and the District Probate Registries. This change will modernise and transform the current process, making it easier and more efficient to complete. Revenue proactively worked with the Probate Office to design an online process that will reduce, and in some instances completely remove, the common errors encountered when completing the current paper form. Removing these errors will lead to reduced processing timelines for applications going forward.

These changes will mean that intermediaries such as, solicitors or agents, and personal applicants such as, executors or administrators of an estate, will be required to submit their Inland Revenue Affidavit online. The changes to the current process are outlined below:

  • Anyone seeking to apply for Grants of Probate or Letters of Administration will need to complete and submit to Revenue the new online version of the Inland Revenue Affidavit, called the Statement of Affairs (Probate) Form SA.2. This can be done by logging in to Revenue’s Online Service (ROS) or MyAccount which can be accessed via www.revenue.ie.
  • A Revenue acknowledgement document will auto-generate for the applicant once the form is successfully completed and submitted electronically. This acknowledgement document is called the Notice of Acknowledgement (Probate) and will contain headline information from the form for use by the Probate Office.
  • An applicant will need to print this acknowledgement and submit it to the Probate Office, along with the other required papers in order to obtain a Grant of Probate or Letters of Administration.

It is expected that the governing regulations will be signed into law and the new online form available by mid-September 2020. Once the online form is available, the Probate Office can only accept new applications that include Revenue’s acknowledgment document. This means there will be no option available to submit an Inland Revenue Affidavit to the Probate Office for approval.

In preparation for the move to an online service the Probate Office will no longer accept paper applications after Friday 4 September 2020.

The service is currently in development and further updates and information on the new process and the online form will be provided by both Revenue and the Courts Service in the coming weeks.