Crimewatch presenter Sue Cook: After losing my beloved mother, the courts made my life a living hell

Telegraph

2 days ago

Sue Cook's mother, Kathleen Thomas, died peacefully in April this year. She was 105, and believed that she had done everything she could to ensure the safe, easy transition of her and her late husband's estate to their children.
'Mum and Dad lived full lives and paid all their taxes,' says the former Crimewatch presenter from her house in Oxfordshire. 'They were proper middle-class people who believed in the system and trusted the state. She would have been shocked by what happened next.'
Before her death, Cook's mother had lodged her will with His Majesty's Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS). 'She thought that was a safe and sensible thing to do – although I would now warn others not to do the same,' says Cook. 'As the named executor, I submitted my application for the release of her will soon after she died. I assumed we'd get it back within four weeks, as that's what they promised on their website.'
But by the time May turned into June, Cook and her brother Steve, who was co-executor, began to worry – they had had no contact with HMCTS, and had not even received a receipt of delivery.
'We began to think her will was lost, as they didn't even acknowledge our application,' says Cook. 'But as soon as I looked into it, I found myself trapped in a logistical nightmare. If you emailed, you got no reply. If you phoned, you got no answer, just a badly recorded piece of music.'
Once, Cook waited 45 minutes only for the phone lines to close at 1pm rather than the 5pm stated on the website. 'Another time, I sat on the line for over an hour and a half, and when someone finally answered they said, 'Sorry, we haven't got access to the wills mailbox – your only recourse is the email address', which I knew from experience nobody answers.'
By midsummer, Cook was beginning to lose patience and once again waited on the phone for hours; when eventually someone answered, they suggested she send all the information to a new email address, which she did – only to get no reply from that either. All the while, her parents' estate sat untouched, with the family unable to distribute money to grandchildren and other relatives.
Cook's story, sadly, is far from unusual. Since the pandemic, the waiting times for probate in particular – which is also overseen by HMCTS – have ballooned.
'I'm 15 and a half years qualified,' says Amy Wallhead, a partner at Culver Law, who specialises in this field. 'When I first started doing this, you'd send documents to the probate registry and tell the client it would take a week to 10 days, but invariably you'd get it back in three or four days. Now, you can't even chase until 20 weeks have passed, and when you do, there is never anybody on the other side of the line to help – all they seem able to do is repeat, 'Computer says no.''
Culver believes that this mess is a result of an 'update' to the system that was completed in March this year. 'Covid, when everyone was working from home, created huge backlogs, but it was the new system that changed everything. They claimed they were streamlining it, but in the process they closed lots of probate registries, which has made everything much less efficient.'
All the while, relatives are being forced to go into battle at a time when they are often at their most vulnerable. 'It can be very difficult,' says Sarah Coles, the head of personal finance at Hargreaves Lansdown. 'Emotionally it's hard on recently bereaved people to not be able to put things to rest because there is no closure in sight on any of the admin. And in many cases you have to maintain a property you don't live in, all because of these unnecessary delays.'
Cook echoes this sentiment. 'I think it has made the past few months harder,' she says. 'It was an added stress we didn't need. You have to arrange the funeral, you have to notify everyone and then decide on a date for a memorial service, and so much more – not to mention getting to grips with your own grief. Dealing with what I could only visualise as an empty office that was holding our mother's will captive wasn't helpful.'
Cook adds that even if the delay was inevitable, a bit of sympathy from the few people she managed to get hold of would have gone a long way. 'A nice email or a few understanding words would have made a huge difference, but nobody was helpful and nobody showed any kindness.'
And still, she was arguably one of the lucky ones. Cook's mother had moved into a care home a few years before her death, and her property was sold during that time, while Cook and her brothers were also able to pay the inheritance tax they owed out of their own pockets. But for many people, delays like these can cost huge sums of money, as houses need to be sold quickly before late fines for inheritance tax start accruing at six months.
'When people go into the process, they assume it will be quick, so they put properties on the market, but then delays mean sales fall through – and then if the house or flat has been around [for sale] for a while, it becomes less likely to sell well,' says Coles. 'It can cause serious long-term financial problems for anyone whose inheritance is tied up in property. At least you can sell a share portfolio the day that probate comes through, whereas a property can take six months or more.'
Similarly, anyone with a relative whose will has been held hostage by HMCTS will be liable for inheritance tax after six months – even if they didn't officially know that an estate had been left to them. 'Interest starts to run on IHT after six months, regardless of the circumstances,' says Wallhead. 'HMRC is totally separate from HMCTS.'
Cook, realising there was no other avenue to pursue, eventually decided to use her journalistic credentials and phoned the department's press office to tell them she was planning on writing an article about the delay in the national press. The two events may well not be connected, but soon after that, the will plopped through her letterbox. According to posts online, other people in similar situations have resorted to calling their MPs.
'Human error'
After being contacted by The Telegraph, HMCTS looked into Cook's case and found that it had received the request for withdrawal on May 5 and that it was ordered from storage the following week. On July 1, a Crown Court usher called the storage team to chase up the withdrawal and was told it had been dispatched on May 27. A search was carried out by the same team, who then realised that the will had been mistakenly filed away rather than posted to Cook. This means, in total, the will retrieval took 11 weeks rather than the four stated online.
A spokesman for HMCTS says: 'The delay was a result of a human error and we apologise for the distress and frustration this has caused. Most requests for withdrawals of wills are processed within four weeks and we have taken action to ensure this does not happen again.'
In response, Cook says: 'It's not only the mistakes, which, in a way, we could accept. It is more that they didn't respond to about eight emails and never gave us an explanation or apology.'
Mostly, she is relieved to have the will in her possession – but that doesn't stop her from being daunted by the prospect of probate. 'Guess who deals with that? HMCTS,' she says. 'Grief, I have realised, is made infinitely worse when you feel powerless; when a system that's supposed to serve the public won't even respond to you. I'm not asking for a shortcut or special treatment; I'm asking for straightforward honesty, transparency and human decency. But I haven't seen a shred of it yet.'