Module 3: 11.00am – 12.30pm (1.5 General CPD Hours)

Friday 9th September 2022 = Seminar 3 in the Postal Booking Form

Probate Applications

‘The High Court Probate Officer On How To Avoid Rejection & Get Your Grants Quicker’

When you Google the ‘Dublin Probate Office’ the first link is for Courts.ie where the following Notice prominently appears:

The Probate Office and District Probate Registries wish to assist you in an efficient manner. To help us in this regard it is important to note the following information:

Role of the Probate Office and role of the solicitor:

  1. The Probate Office and District Probate Registries assess the documentation you prepare and ensure that you have complied with relevant succession law.
  2. They have no role in the drafting/preparation of your documentation and do not give legal advice where issues arise for you regarding title and the relevant application of succession law.

Yet, despite this reminder, practitioners persistently lodge papers with multiple errors, causing avoidable delays and unnecessary additional work, right throughout the process, for themselves, their clients and Probate Office staff.

To assist us to make less errors, reduce waiting times, avoid rejections and help the Probate Office provide a better service, this presentation by the High Court Probate Officer himself, John Glennon, will outline, using appropriate statistics and a useful list of the most common errors being made, the reasons why papers are returned to practitioners, including a detailed analysis of the types of errors being made.

John will also outline the consequences for citizens and practitioners when papers are returned, and the steps the Probate Office has itself taken to reduce error rates.

Speaker

John Glennon BL MBA is the High Court Probate Officer. He was appointed to that post in July of 2018. Other than a period of time spent working as Head of Administration in the Law Reform Commission he has spent his entire career working in various offices of the Supreme and High Court. He has worked on two occasions in the Central office of the High Court and has also worked in the Wards of Court Office, the Taxing Masters Office and the Probate Office. He has also worked as a full time Registrar in the High Court. Following the establishment of the Courts Service John was appointed as the first Personnel Officer and subsequently became the Director of Human Resources. In recent years he was appointed as Examiner of the High Court and more recently appointed Probate Officer. John also served as a member of the Courts Service Board in recent years. He was called to the Bar in 1988