Grants of probate (FOI)

​Request

Considering only adults normally resident in Jersey (ie excluding tourists and other temporary visitors):

For each of the most recent five years for which data is available:

A

How many such adults died each year?

B

How many Grants of Probate were issued by the Judicial Greffier?

C

How many (or what %) of those Grants of Probate were granted to:

• one or more private individuals named as executors by the testator

• legal firms named as executor by the testator

• executor datives

D

 How many (or what %) of the deceased were:

• born in Jersey

• born in the UK

• born elsewhere in the EU

• born elsewhere

E

How many (or what %) of the deceased, for each category listed in the previous question:

• died intestate

• died having made a Will of moveable estate under Jersey law

• died having made a Will of immoveable estate under Jersey law

• died having made a Will conforming to the legislation of another jurisdiction

Response

The Superintendent Registrar makes an annual report of statistics for Births, Marriages and Deaths to the States Assembly. These can be found on the States Assembly website by searching for the phrase ‘superintendent registrar’ and filtering by document type Assembly Reports:

States Assembly search portal

Figures for Grants of Probate are produced by the Probate and Protection Division of the Royal Court however they are not related to the number of deaths in Jersey reported by the Superintendent Registrar, but rather to the number of Grants of Probate issued by the Division in a particular year. Therefore we are not able to respond to questions D and E in terms of the number of deceased: however in addition to our responses to questions B and C below we provide what figures we hold in terms relating to questions D and E as a percentage of the number of Grants of Probate issued.

A

The above publicly available annual statistics from the Superintendent Registrar do not break down the figures for deaths into Jersey or non-Jersey residents: to extract this information to respond to question A in terms of only adults normally resident in Jersey would require manual review of all death certificates over this period. We estimate it would take more than 12.5 hours to make such a review, therefore Article 16 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied.

B

Grants of Probate issued by the Probate and Protection Division of the Royal Court:

C

We do not have a separate figure for executor datives who might fall in either of the other categories.

Percentage of Grants issued to Personal Applicants or Lawyers as executor:

D

The above publicly available annual statistics from the Superintendent Registrar do not break down the figures for deaths by place of birth: to extract this information to respond to question D would require manual review of all death certificates over this period. We estimate it would take more than 12.5 hours to make such a review, therefore Article 16 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied.

From the Probate and Protection Division of the Royal Court, we do not have a breakdown by place of birth, but we are able to provide information regarding the domicile of applications for Grant of Probate. Domicile is often but not always the same as place of birth.

Domicile as a percentage of Grants of Probate issued:

E

There is no requirement to register a Will of immoveable estate with the Royal Court and we do not hold figures for those having died having made a Will conforming to the legislation of another jurisdiction, therefore we are unable to supply information in response to those elements of this question.

The figures for Testate all relate to Wills of moveable estate under Jersey Law. Note the total of Testate + Intestate does not sum to 100% because some Grants in the Royal Court will not fall in either category.

Articles applied

Article 16 A scheduled public authority may refuse to supply information if cost excessive

(1) A scheduled public authority that has been requested to supply information may refuse to supply the information if it estimates that the cost of doing so would exceed an amount determined in the manner prescribed by Regulations.

Regulation 2 (1) of the Freedom of Information (Costs) (Jersey) Regulations 2014 allows an authority to refuse a request for information where the estimated cost of dealing with the request would exceed the specified amount of the cost limit of £500. This is the estimated cost of one person spending 12.5 working hours in determining whether the department holds the information, locating, retrieving and extracting the information.