Lawyer Observes Threefold Increase in Estate Cases
Professional Observation from a Lawyer
In my job we have seen a surge in the death of clients. Our estate numbers have increased threefold over the last 2-3 years. I can’t be too specific about this but over the last 18 months I have attended at the local hospital to do wills for three young men ranging in age from 45-60. Each of them had a rapid onset cancer. Two of them I visited seemed quite cogent but died within three days later. Mine is a small practice so if this is endemic there would be a lot more people in this category.
An interesting statistic that has been underplayed has been the time it takes to get probate of a will. Before covid it was about 3-4 weeks. Then it extended out to as many months. No-one seemed to know why but I think there is not enough staff to process the large volume before the court.
The law society complained about the delays and the disruption in people’s lives so the DoJ took stock and now gives priority to the granting of probates. It is now back to about 3 weeks.
There are flow-on effects for the banks too. They are also struggling with the large volume of work and are signalling the number of days to a response due to heavy workloads.
As you can see there is an industry-wide trend which supports the notion that the common denominator is the covid 19 vaccine.
