The Probate Office has introduced changes intended to bring a degree of clarity to probate procedures for practitioners and to increase the efficiency of the Probate Office. These new rules will reduce the likelihood of papers being queried and are intended to make the system more legally robust and relevant.

In response to these developments, Practical Probate has been specially formulated to represent a concise collection of essential principles on probate practice, written in the style of the late Eamonn G. Mongey’s Probate Practice in a Nutshell.

This text presents the reader with a practical approach to the issues that practitioners face on a day-to-day basis, and provides a succinct road map, setting out the steps that need to be taken in probate practice in a straightforward and clear manner. It focuses on the core issues surrounding probate practice; in particular: the validity of wills, inheritance rights, and the extraction of grants.

Features:

• Consolidated statutory, regulatory, and customary practices and procedures.
• Helpful precedent wills, oaths, and other essential documentation.
• A series of helpful checklists, which assist the practitioner in identifying the correct procedure.
• Presents the ‘nuts and bolts’ of probate practice and procedure in an easy-to-interpret format.

Karl Dowling BL is a Barrister with a specialist practice in Probate Litigation and regularly appears before the High Court and Circuit Court. He is a Founding Member of the Probate Bar Association.

Susan Martin is a Solicitor, with a busy Dublin practice, and has significant experience in the administration of estates and probate litigation. She is an Officer of Dublin Solicitors Bar Association and a Member of the Council of the Law Society of Ireland.

Motions and Actions Relating to Wills and Intestacies provides a comprehensive and in-depth account of probate issues that require motion procedure or probate actions instituted by plenary summons to resolve them, and issues that require administration actions, and constructions suits instituted by special summons to resolve them, and issues in equity that require equitable actions instituted by plenary summons to resolve them.

Key features:

• Probate issues and use of motion procedure, and probate issues that form the subject matter of probate actions, and issues of costs in such actions
• Issues that form the subject matter of administration actions, construction suits and equitable actions, and issues of costs in such actions and suits
• Time issues and time limits for instituting proceedings
• High Court and Circuit Court Forms and caveat and citations forms and procedures as prescribed by the Rules of the Superior Courts and Circuit Court Rules
• Amendments to the Rules of the Superior Courts by Statutory Instruments introduced in 2016 dealing with case management and conducting trials
• Recent and important High Court, Court of Appeal and Supreme Court decisions

About the author

Dr Albert Keating, BCL, LL.B, LL.M, DLitt, Barrister-at-Law is the author of numerous books and articles in the areas of probate, succession law and jurisprudence. His latest major work is Keating on Probate, Fifth Edition, published by Thomson Reuters Round Hall in 2015.

The Law and Practice of Personal Representatives provides a definitive version on the law relating to:

• the appointment of executors and administrators,
• the administrative and distributive duties, powers, and liabilities of personal representatives, administrative actions
• the issue of costs and time limits for bringing such actions

Recent court decisions have lent a renewed and incisive focus on the role, duties, power, and liabilities of personal representatives and practitioners in the field who should be fully conversant with the upshot of such decisions.

Such decisions include:

• Shaughnessy v Shaughnessy [2016] IEHC 303 (personal liability of nominated executors)
• Dunne v Dunne [2016] IECA 269 and Muckian v Hoey [2016] IEHC 688 (the removal and replacement of administrators)
• In the Estate of White [2015] IESC 84 (the duties of personal representatives)
• In the Estate of O'Callaghan [2016] IEHC 668 (the appointment of administrators for limited purposes)

Key features:

• The important amendments to the Rules of the Superior Courts by Statutory Instruments introduced in 2016 relating to pre-trial procedures and conduct of trials
• A renewed concentration of the roles, duties, powers, and liabilities of personal representatives
• Takes account of all recent court decisions relating to the role, duties, powers, and liabilities of personal representatives

References to all recent and pertinent Probate Office updates relating to the proofs required in applications for:

• grants of probate
• letters of administration with will annexed or intestate
• applications for grants by guardians, committees, and attorneys
• de bonis non
• applications by personal representatives of persons who die domiciled abroad
• applications for grants by administrators appointed by the court pursuant to s.27(4) of the Succession Act 1965
• A total revision of parts and chapters of the book incorporating recent court decisions, Probate Office updates and amendments to the Rules of the Superior Courts

About the author

Dr Albert Keating, BCL, LL.B, LL.M, DLitt, Barrister-at-Law is the author of numerous books and articles in the areas of probate, succession law and jurisprudence. His latest major work is Keating on Probate, Fifth Edition, which was published by Thomson Reuters Round Hall in 2015.