What Irish Probate Costs When You Live Abroad

An executor in another country has one disadvantage that an Irish executor does not: they cannot walk into a solicitor’s office, and they cannot easily tell whether the figure they are quoted by email is reasonable. The cost of an Irish grant has three parts. One is the solicitor’s fee, which is the part that varies between firms and should be fixed and in writing before anything starts. The second is the Probate Office fee, which is set by regulation and is the same for everyone. The third is outlay, the third-party costs that a cross-border file generates and that a domestic one largely does not. This article explains each, what a written costs notice has to contain, and the questions to ask any Irish solicitor before you instruct them.

The Solicitor’s Fee

Irish law requires a solicitor to give the client a written notice of the costs, or the basis on which they will be calculated, before work begins. For an Irish grant on a non-resident estate we quote a fixed fee in that notice, based on the type of grant, the number and kind of Irish assets, and the work the file will involve, such as foreign documents, PPS applications for a large family, or a property sale alongside the estate. VAT at the Irish rate is added. We do not calculate the fee as a percentage of the estate. A fixed fee means the executor can tell the beneficiaries abroad what the Irish side will cost before anyone commits, and it means the fee does not rise because an Irish institution took three letters to answer instead of one.

Some work sits outside the grant and is quoted separately when it arises: a conveyance where Irish property is sold, which is a separate transaction with its own fee; litigation where the estate is contested; and the untangling of an unadministered estate across several generations, described in the land is still in your grandfather’s name, which cannot be priced until the chain is known. In each case the notice is updated before the further work starts.

The Probate Office Fee

The Probate Office charges a court fee on every application, fixed by statutory instrument and scaled according to the net value of the estate in Ireland. It is the same whether the applicant lives in Dublin or Denver and whether or not a solicitor is used. It is paid on lodgement and passed on as outlay. Because it depends on the net Irish estate, it is one of the reasons the asset schedule with date-of-death values comes first: until the schedule is complete, the fee cannot be stated. Fees for additional sealed copies of the Irish grant, which the Irish institutions each want to see, are small and are added to the outlay.

The Outlay

Outlay is where a cross-border file differs most from a domestic one. The items are real costs paid to third parties, passed on at cost, and most of them are incurred where the executor lives rather than in Ireland.

PPS-number applications themselves carry no fee, though the certified documents they require may. We list the expected outlay for the particular file in the costs notice so that there is a single figure for the whole Irish side rather than a fee followed by surprises.

Who Pays and When

The cost of taking out the grant is a proper expense of the estate and comes out of it in the end. The practical difficulty in a non-resident estate is that nothing in Ireland can be released until the grant issues, so there is no Irish money to pay the fee from at the start. In practice the executor or the family funds the fee and the outlay in the first instance and is reimbursed from the Irish assets after the grant, and the costs notice states when payment is due. Where the Irish assets are modest, this arithmetic is part of deciding whether a grant is worth taking out at all, which is a question we answer candidly; a grant that costs more than the asset it releases is not a service to anyone, and the small-holding procedures in credit union accounts, prize bonds and small holdings exist for that case.

Tax Is Not in This Article

Legal costs are one thing; tax is another, and we do not advise on it. Whether Irish Capital Acquisitions Tax, UK inheritance tax, US estate tax or anything else applies to the estate or its beneficiaries is a question for an accountant or tax adviser, and the cost of that advice is a separate expense of the estate. What we handle is the Revenue procedure every Irish grant requires, the Statement of Affairs (Form SA.2), and the appointment of an Irish solicitor as agent where the law requires one for non-resident beneficiaries, which is explained in do I need an Irish solicitor for probate?

The Questions to Ask Any Irish Solicitor

Four, before you instruct anyone. Is the fee fixed, and is it in writing? Is the Probate Office fee and the expected outlay listed separately? Do you take out grants for executors abroad regularly, and will the papers be sent with instructions for my notary? And what happens to the fee if the estate turns out to be different from what I described? A solicitor who answers all four in the first email is one who has done this before. The remaining questions about the process itself, from documents to timeline, are answered across this site, starting with international probate and Irish assets.