When a person is placed in wardship the Wards of Courts office will require the original will to be lodged with them. You may be aware of this, but what you might not have dealt with, is administering the estate of the Ward when the Ward dies. In these cases you cannot simply look for the will back and prove the original. There is a set procedure.

Step 1: you will have to go through the dismissal procedure of the Wards of Court office. This will involve filing the final statement of facts (precedent is provided by the Wards of Court office) and seeking dismissal of the Wardship. At the time of requesting dismissal of the Wardship, you should request the Wards of Court office to forward the original will to the Probate Office.

Step 2: Then you obtain a fee card for the estate of €15. With the fee card you then write to the Probate Office requesting them to forward to you a Probate Office attested version of the Will.

Step 3: You then prove the Probate Office attested version. It is still a grant of probate case, as long as all the other usual probate criteria are met (ie living named executors willing to act).

Wording for the oath is

. . . . . aged 18 years and upwards, make oath and say, that we/I believe the paper writing hereto annexed, and marked by us/me, to contain the true sealed and attested certified official copy of the  last will of the above named deceased . . . .

Obviously, this procedure will only last as long as wardship procedure stays in place. Under the Capacity Act we have a new regime with Decision Making Representatives. So that will change radically the current regime, but until that regime is in place, this is the procedure.

Hope this helps and remember, if you have any probate, will drafting, capacity or inheritance tax queries, please reach out to me via the Solicitor Query Service on our site or on the link below.

https://theprobatehub.ie/solicitor-query/

Colm Kelly, The Probate Hub