Price transparency for uncontested probate
The administration of uncontested estates where all assets are within the UK. Contested probate and estates with foreign assets sit outside the mandatory pricing rule — but if your page doesn't say so, readers will assume your figures cover them. If your firm's website offers this service, Rule 1 of the SRA Transparency Rules sets out exactly what price information the site must publish.
Sources last verified: 2026-08-14.1 — official SRA links are cited in each section.
Does this apply to your firm?
Any regulated firm offering uncontested probate or estate administration on its website. Probate pricing is where “it depends on the estate” most often replaces the range the rule actually requires.
What must be published for uncontested probate
- A clear split between the services you price: grant-only (obtaining the grant of probate on figures the executors supply) versus full estate administration (collecting and distributing assets).
- For fixed-fee grant-only work: the fee and exactly what it covers.
- For administration charged on time: the hourly rates and a realistic estimate range for a typical estate — plus, if you charge a percentage of the estate's value, how that is calculated and combined with time costs.
- Whether VAT applies to your fees and to each disbursement.
- The experience and qualifications of the people doing the work and their supervisors.
- Key stages and likely timescales — obtaining the grant versus completing the administration are very different timelines and should be stated separately.
Official source: SRA — Transparency in price and service guidance · Sources last verified: 2026-08-11
Disbursements to describe
Disbursements are costs payable to third parties that your firm handles on the client's behalf. The rule expects them described and priced (or ranged) — for this service that typically means:
- The probate application fee, plus the cost of additional sealed copies of the grant.
- Bankruptcy-only searches against beneficiaries.
- Statutory advertisements under the Trustee Act — a notice in The London Gazette and a local newspaper — protecting the executors from unknown creditors, with typical costs.
- Valuation fees for property or shareholdings where these are needed.
For every disbursement, say whether VAT applies to it — mixing VAT-inclusive fees with VAT-silent third-party costs is one of the most frequent findings on otherwise careful pages.
Common gaps on live sites
Only the grant-only fixed fee published, while the full-administration service most clients actually buy has no figures at all.
Hourly rates listed with no estimate of total hours or overall range — the guidance expects a meaningful estimate, not just a rate card.
A percentage-of-estate charge mentioned without explaining what it applies to or that it is charged in addition to time.
No statement that the published figures assume an uncontested estate with UK assets and no disputes between beneficiaries.
Timescales missing, or a single figure that doesn't separate grant from administration.
These are patterns seen across real firm websites — none of them implies bad faith. Pages get edited, calculators break, and requirements written for lawyers get trimmed by marketing. That's an argument for checking the live page regularly, not for blame.
Is your uncontested probate page still saying what it should?
FirmProof runs automated monitoring checks against your live public pages every week and keeps dated evidence of what was found. Start with the free scan — no account, one scan a day.
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