Genealogy Chat

I followed this tip when it was mentioned on a thread a couple of months ago.

I found my relations probate and name of the child he had fathered including the parents names. Previously, I had absolutely no idea of either the child's christian nor surname. Without finding this info on the Probate, I would never have found the information.

I've just, today, ordered the will of my 2x great grandfather from 1888. It will be emailed to me for £10.00.

I wish I could get other certs emailed to me as a lot of our post is mis-directed to the Cayman Islands instead of the Canary Islands.

I've searched the 1858-1996 part and found useful information.

Hi Allan,

Yes, it's great to see that they held good to the plan to add the 1858-1996 indexes to the site (see Inky1's post).

Just seen this :-)

Have been on the site and there are three headings:

Wills and Probate 1996 to present

Wills and Probate 1858 to 1996

Soldiers Wills.

Found the date of Death of an Uncle in 1998

Para 2 is a good one - I've been think that myself, or at least asking on here if anyone has found a link elsewhere

Has anyone provided feedback?

Mine:-
Clicking "feedback" does not result in any input screen. In fact it seems to crash my internet connection.

Suggest that you consider having a chart/list of the areas covered by each District Probate Registry.

I was most confused to see that for my father [XXNAME & DATE OF DEATHXX] the Registry was Brighton, seeing that he died at his home in XXLONDON AREAXX. Until, that is, I got out my probate copy.

Kind regards,

Reply from HMCTS Wills:-
Good morning, thank you for feedback regarding your experience using this new service, your suggestions will go towards helping us develop a more effective and user friendly service.

Your suggestions have been put to our developers for consideration. Additionally, the entire Probate Calendar dating back to 1858 will be included in this service within the coming months.

Kind Regards

Very helpful. Thank you.

Thank your the tip.

I've found several of mine including my nans which I did last year.

Chris

hank yu I will give it a try

sally w <3

I did head the thread Probate 1996-2014, so assumed people would realise from that, it only listed probates from the last 18 years or so :-S

I hoped the free probate index might be of interest to people, and whilst I realise every death does not result in a probate entry, I also thought the site might work as an additional tool for searching for relatively recent deaths in England and Wales after 2007, which is where most online death indexes end.

I was personally very impressed that my uncle, whose probate date was Sept 2014, ie only a month ago, was listed.

It does not have pre 1966.

It states:

'Search for the will or probate of any person in the UK who died in or after 1996'

Mine were pre 1966. And as I was just trying out the site, thought the best thing to do was to try for those I knew as I already had the wills.

Was not impressed!

Kucinta

That's a great find.........in my favourites

:-)

I have found 4 out of 5, at a quick random search.

So - a very reasonable result for a test site.

Did the death occur 1996 or later?? It supposed to be a Beta site, so may be that's why they are missing.

There is another little wrinkle - depending on the size of the Estate and the heirs, it may not have ended up on the Calender.

A neighbour died last year - the Estate was too small to go to full Probate and only one heir, his wife.

The same applied to a friend's father who died in 1998 - we'd looked for a Will as he wanted to check up on something. He knew the Estate had been left to the father's second wife but he wanted to check the wording.

Went on there and found ZILCH

And that was for wills that I already had!!!!!

Happy to hear people are finding it useful :-)

Brilliant! This has given me an intriguing little mystery to solve. Have just found a 2012 death for a relative in Newcastle Upon Tyne, total surprise as we have no links there whatsoever. Her husband died 7 years previously in Kidderminster. So, as a childless (I believe) widow in her 70's she ended up in Newcastle for some reason.

Thanks so much for bringing this site to our attention Kucinta.

Jan x

Many thanks Kucinta