Digital Courts Service

The Problem#

• The Digital Courts Service processes approximately 300,000 probate applications per year in England and Wales
• Applicants complete a PA1P form and separately submit an IHT400 (or IHT205) to HMRC — the two submissions contain overlapping data in incompatible formats
• Applicants or their solicitors enter the same information twice, creating discrepancies that trigger manual review
• An estimated 18% of applications are returned for corrections, adding 6-8 weeks to each affected case
• Average time to grant is currently 16 weeks

How They’d Use INHERIT#

• Accept a single INHERIT document that populates both PA1P and IHT400 simultaneously — estate.json provides the deceased’s domicile and estate status
• Use person.json with identifiers[] containing National Insurance numbers via common/identifier.json for deceased and executors
• Apply the uk-england-wales extension for IHT inputs — nilRateBand, residenceNilRateBand, transferableNilRateBand, and inheritanceTaxRate — all as temporal rules for the date of death
• Map asset.json and property.json entries to IHT400 schedules: financial assets to Schedule IHT403, household goods to the main form, jointly owned assets flagged with ownership details
• Capture executor details in executor.json (acceptance status), the will in document.json (documentType, executedDate, witnessCount, codicilCount), and debts in liability.json
• Validate incoming documents against the schema, auto-reject invalid submissions with specific common/error-codes.json codes, and return structured responses via notification.json

The Integration#

• Import-focused API endpoint: solicitors’ case management systems and online will-writing platforms submit INHERIT documents to the Digital Courts Service
• The service validates, transforms, and routes data to both internal probate and HMRC systems
• Structured responses confirm receipt, flag validation errors, or request additional information

The Business Case#

• Average time to grant drops from 16 weeks to 8 weeks
• Eliminating dual submission saves solicitors an estimated 45 minutes per application — across 300,000 applications, that is 225,000 solicitor hours freed annually
• Reducing the return rate from 18% to under 5% saves approximately 39,000 manual review cycles per year
• Total annual savings estimated at £12 million across the system

Before / After#

Without INHERIT:

1. Solicitor completes the PA1P probate application form online
2. Solicitor separately completes the IHT400 form for HMRC, re-entering the deceased’s details, asset values, and beneficiary information
3. Discrepancies between the two submissions trigger a manual review flag
4. Application is returned to the solicitor for correction — adding 6-8 weeks
5. Corrected application is resubmitted and re-enters the queue
6. Grant of probate is issued after an average of 16 weeks

With INHERIT:

1. Solicitor’s case management system generates a single INHERIT document containing all estate data
2. INHERIT document is submitted once to the Digital Courts Service API
3. The service validates the document against the schema, routes data to both probate and HMRC workflows simultaneously
4. Any validation errors are returned immediately with specific error codes — no weeks-long round-trip
5. Grant of probate is issued after an average of 8 weeks