Probate in Ireland from England: How the Irish Grant Works for UK Executors

The pattern repeats in solicitors’ offices from Kent to Cumbria. A parent or an aunt dies in England. The English grant of probate issues. The estate is nearly finished, and then a letter comes back from an Irish bank, from a share registrar in Dublin, or from Tailte Éireann (the Irish Land Registry): the English grant is not accepted, and an Irish grant of representation is required before anything can move. This is the article for that moment. It explains what Ireland does with an English grant, how an executor living in England takes out the Irish grant without travelling, and where the weeks actually go.

Why the English Grant Stops at the Irish Sea

Ireland does not reseal foreign grants. England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland share a system under which a grant from one is recognised in the others. Ireland was never part of that system and has no equivalent arrangement with the UK. An Irish bank, an Irish company’s share registrar or the Land Registry can only act on a grant issued by the Irish Probate Office. The rule is uniform: it applies to a grant from the Winchester District Probate Registry exactly as it applies to a grant from a court in Texas. We set out the logic of the rule in why Ireland won’t reseal your foreign grant.

The English grant is not wasted. Where the deceased died domiciled in England and an English grant has issued, the Irish Probate Office will normally issue the Irish grant to the person who holds the English grant, on production of a sealed and certified copy of it with the will annexed. In practice the English grant does two useful things: it proves who is entitled to apply in Ireland, and it short-circuits the question of whether the will is valid, which has already been decided in England.

Which Irish Grant You Will Be Applying For

Three types of Irish grant exist and the English picture decides which one fits. If you are the executor named in the will and you proved it in England, the Irish application is usually for a grant of probate. If there was no executor able to act, or the English grant was a grant of letters of administration with will annexed, the Irish equivalent is a grant of administration with will annexed. If there was no will at all, it is a grant of administration intestate, and the person entitled is worked out under Irish rules for Irish land and under English rules for everything else. That split between land and other assets runs through every cross-border estate and we explain it in died abroad, no will, assets in Ireland.

The Sequence, Run From England

A well-run Irish application for an English executor follows a fixed order, and most of the delay on badly run files comes from doing the steps one after another instead of together.

When an Irish Solicitor Is Required, Not Just Helpful

An executor in England meets a rule that domestic Irish executors never see. Broadly, where the person applying for the grant lives outside Ireland and a beneficiary living outside Ireland is to receive €20,000 or more, Irish law requires an Irish solicitor to be appointed before the grant issues, with that solicitor acting as the estate’s agent for Irish tax compliance. For most English estates with Irish assets worth having a grant for, that rule applies. Separately, personal applications to the Irish Probate Office require the applicant to attend in person, which is impractical from England. The practical position is that the Irish limb runs through an Irish solicitor, and the only real question is how early you instruct one. We explain the rule in full in do I need an Irish solicitor for probate?

The Points Where English Executors Get Caught

The same handful of problems account for most of the delay on English files. The deceased’s name is spelled one way on the English grant and another way on the Irish bank account, and the Probate Office requires every document to match. The beneficiaries in the will are described by relationship rather than name, so identifying them for the Revenue form takes time. An old Irish shareholding has been through three registrars and a rights issue since the certificate was last seen, and has to be reconstructed, as described in Irish shares in a foreign estate. And the English will contains a clause that was never meant to affect Ireland but does, which is the subject of when a foreign will accidentally revokes the Irish one.

None of these is fatal. All of them cost weeks if they are discovered at lodgement instead of at the start. The reason a cross-border file rewards an early instruction is simply that the slow items can be run in parallel with the rest.

Irish Law Still Applies to Irish Land

One point that surprises English executors and their solicitors: Irish land and buildings are governed by Irish succession law regardless of where the deceased was domiciled. If the Irish asset is a house or a field, a surviving spouse’s legal right share and a child’s right to apply under section 117 can touch it, even though the will was made and proved in England. Usually this changes nothing. Occasionally it changes everything, and it is better known before distribution than after.