Genealogy Forum UK

As I have several ancesters where there is no will and no administration of the estate, I'm wondering whether there was a lower limit whereby if the deceased had very little of any value there was no need of administration?
Would some people just have handled it themselves without going to the trouble of probate?

I'm pretty sure that some of my ancesters didn't have much, but others were probaly considerably better off.

There are limits nowadays but I don't know when they first came in (google might help) and I don't know about any specific limits in the past but I don't think I've found much under £100 in the late 19th/early 20th centuries.

Probate is performed no matter how poor the person and if intestate (no will exists) or not. Up until 11 January 1858, this was a function of the local churches. After that there were 40 district record centers established and the main depository, the Perogative Court Of Canterbury, was the central point of record keeping.

Only if a person is given executor rights or letters of administration are the details recorded in the Perogative Court Of Canterbury records that have been indexed and are online.

Up until 1782 a detailed list of the deceased goods and monetary worth had to be recorded and provided to the local court by the executor or administrator. Most of these records have not been indexed but can be viewed at local offices or in church records.

So prior to 1858, the church and local court will hold any will and/or probate records.

Up to 1782 a persons worth was recorded and detailed in a list held at the local court or church.

After 1782 a persons worth is provided to the court but a detailed list is not required (interestingly, these lists are still needed in Australia and provide heaps of usefull information).

Any executor or administration information will be held in local records only up to 1858.

After 1858 the Perogative Court Of Canterbury holds the executor and administration records.

Where confusion comes in is people believing probate was not done.

How poor a person is determines if any death taxes etc are to be enforced, not if probate is to be performed.

Most of the records I'm interested in are post 1858.

I imagine that the wives wouldn't always be down - depending on the date, their property would have been given over to their husbands on marriage - and in some cases if the wife outlived the husband, his will may have already outlined what happened after the wife's death.

I know for example my gr gr aunt (who was a spinster), ran a shop - I would have expected to find something for her, but nothing seems to be coming up. I don't have a date of death for her, so maybe she hadn't died by 1966.(I'm looking at Ancestry's probate records)
And there are others too. My Mum's side of the family generally, don't turn up on the probate records. They seemed generally to have been poorer than my Dad's side of the family, judging by their occupations.

Find My Past have the Death Duty records from 1796 - 1903.

Not a very good search engine.

The records show you the death date, who the exectuor/administrator was and wether it was a Will or Intestate. It also tells you the court the records are held in.

The Genealogist has all of the Canterbury Wills with a translated summary plus the original documents. The wills are written in legal speak with no puntuation. i.e, even if the will is several pages it is one sentence!

They also have someo f the local records. For instance Lichfield 1515-1652. Worcestershire 1451-1652.

There's a lot of info about current probate rules available at http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/governmentc ... g_10029799
From where I have taken this quote:

When a grant may not be needed

A grant of representation may not be needed where:

the person who died left less than £5,000
they owned everything jointly with someone else and everything passes automatically to the surviving joint owner

To establish whether the assets can be obtained without a grant, the executor or administrator would need to write to each institution informing them of the death and enclosing a photocopy of the death certificate (and will if there is one).

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