Can You Contest a Will After Probate Has Been Granted?

May 2025

If you believe there is a problem with the Will a loved one has left behind, this can add a huge amount of complication to a situation that is already difficult.

You might be thinking about raising a challenge against the Will, but you will need to meet specific legal criteria in order to be able to do this. Even if circumstances mean that you do have the right to challenge a Will, it’s important to think carefully about whether this is the right way forward for you and those around you.

Challenging a Will can be a stressful, longwinded and expensive process, and there are no guarantees that it will conclude in your favour.

The process can also involve key time constraints, and missing these could make a complicated and costly process significantly more complicated and costly.

Why might you want to contest a Will? 

There are a variety of reasons why you might be considering contesting a Will. There are two types of Will challenges: challenges based on formalities and challenges based on circumstances.

A challenge based on formalities is where the is a question of a Will being invalid due to the formalities of Will-making being incorrectly followed.

This could be because:

• The Will was not signed or witnessed correctly.
• The person who made the Will wished to revoke it.
• The person who made the Will was married, entered a civil partnership, or got divorced after the Will was made, therefore making it wholly or partly invalid.
• The wording in the Will is unclear or confusing.

A challenge based on circumstances may be relevant to you if there is no issue with the way the Will was made itself, but there are outside circumstances that may have affected the individual’s ability to make a Will that truly reflected their wishes.

You might wish to make this kind of challenge if you believe:

• The person who made the Will was not in their right mind at the time of making it.
• Someone was putting the person who made the Will under significant pressure.
• The person who made the Will did not know or understand the full contents of the Will and what the consequences of it would be.
• Someone deliberately misrepresented a potential beneficiary to the person who made the Will in order to encourage them to disinherit that beneficiary.

If you disagree with the contents of a Will for another reason – such believing a promise was broken or that it does not adequately provide for someone who had a right to be provided for – you might be able to make an inheritance claim against the estate.

What if probate has already been granted?

Technically speaking, in most cases you have twelve years from the date of death to challenge a Will. However, in practice, raising a successful challenge is likely to become more difficult the more time goes on.

If you wait too long before taking steps to raise a challenge, the court may determine that the matter has been left too long for them to deal with. Context will matter a great deal here: if you knew that the process was well underway and chose not to act immediately, the court may well be far less open to your challenge than they would be if you had only found out about the issue after probate had been granted and had acted as soon as you knew.

There can also be very practical issues with this. Will challenges often heavily rely on the evidence gathered by the claimants. The longer it has been before you raise a challenge, the less likely it is that key witnesses will have clear memories of the events or that documentary evidence will still be available.

Finally, one of the major practical issues in raising a challenge after probate has been granted is that this can result in significant difficulty in recovering any money or property belonging to the estate. This is because once probate has been granted, the executors of the estate may well already have started, or even completed, the process of distributing these assets to the relevant beneficiaries. It’s also important to note that if statutory notice was published prior to the estate being distributed, the executors are likely to be protected from any personal liability for claims.

Though it is still possible to challenge a Will after probate has been granted – and even after the estate has been distributed to beneficiaries – this is obviously a great deal more complicated. In these matters, estate assets may need to be recovered from beneficiaries, which can lead to significant problems if those assets have been spent or sold on.

Because of this, the process of challenging a Will after probate is granted is likely to involve a great deal more legal assistance and therefore far more legal costs. This is one of the key reasons why it is crucial to act quickly in situations such as these, though we do recognise that this is not always possible.

Who can you turn to for help?

Ideally, anyone wishing to raise a challenge against a Will should do so as soon as possible after the details of the Will have come to light. In these scenarios, an expert probate solicitor would be able to work with you to lodge a caveat with the Probate Registry, which would prevent probate being granted while legal proceedings are ongoing.

Of course, we don’t live in an ideal world, and circumstances may have meant this isn’t possible. If you have discovered new evidence about the validity of a Will after probate has been granted, it is definitely still worth seeking specialist legal advice.

Please get in touch, and we will be able to advise you on any legal steps that may be open to you.