Public access to content of wills

Carlow52

Discussion over dinner, neighbour been left a big lump of 'mula' in a will and he wonders if it will eventually be publically available for all the 'squinting windows' brigade to salviate over.

I thought not but he says you see it in the paper..
"Joe Blogs left XXX etc"
or
"Mary Blogg's estate was worth XXX"
Thanks for any insights

Tom Young

Generally when the will undergoes Probate the process of proving the will there is every chance that the contents will be reported. Though I did here that there are/was to be changes to this procedure.

spurious

AFAIK you can go into the Probate Office and order a copy of any will that's been probated.

€6.00 from what I see here (no.22).

coylemj

The will is a public document once it's admitted to probate, you can ask for a copy and this is available from the Probate Office. I could be wrong but it looks like it costs 6 euros to get a copy of a will......

http://www.courts.ie/Courts.ie/Library3.nsf/PageCurrent/BC7D8CAFF70E017C802575AF003E0ED1?opendocument&l=en

Carlow52

Thank you very much for these links. Much appreciated.

Delancey

There is something to what Tom Young has said - the last President of the High Court was apparently all set to end the practice of wills being available to anyone who sought a copy , this was following representations from people who felt they would become the target of extortion/kidnapping if it was known they were the benficiaries of large estates.
According to the press this was a case of ' when ' and not 'if ' this change was made - that said nothing seems to have altered yet.

Tom Young

What would be eminently sensible is a register of people who pay a fee to access wills under non contemporaneous circumstances, i.e., not when being read out in open Court.

The other mechanism which may also be sensible is to issue practice directions in terms of probate motions, so that wills can undergo probate without necessarily getting into the full details in financial terms of what has been left in a given estate. Though I can imagine that this might pose problems for administering law in public. Where a judge reads papers in advance of a case, it is often practice that the requirement to run through every minute detail is dispatched with unless a will or motion is being contested. In any case, the bench will be apprised of the facts in a well drafted application/affidavit again removing the need to fine gossip fodder details.

Tom

PS: Stokes the fire!

dermot_sheehan

Wills were public documents until 2009.

The President of the High Court then issued a direction pursuant to s. 42 of the Succession Act only permitting certain people to view the will and inland revenue affidavit in the probate office.
http://courts.ie/courts.ie/library3.nsf/5188a5224a83c8aa80256e310050dcb2/95f8b7f057240a21802575f50036a4db?OpenDocument

Jo King

from my reading of that, the revenue affidavit is the only document which cannot be viewed by members of the public.there is nothing to say that the will itself cannot be viewed.
"2. On the issue of the Grant of Representation, such documents are to be made available for inspection by the public with the exception of the Inland Revenue Affidavit to which the following conditions shall apply:"

dats_right

On behalf of a creditor client, I recently obtained a copy will and grant but was denied the Inland Revenue Affidavit.

dermot_sheehan

Jo King wrote: »

from my reading of that, the revenue affidavit is the only document which cannot be viewed by members of the public.there is nothing to say that the will itself cannot be viewed.
"2. On the issue of the Grant of Representation, such documents are to be made available for inspection by the public with the exception of the Inland Revenue Affidavit to which the following conditions shall apply:"

My mistake, it's just the inland revenue affidavit, misread that.