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No official source publishes what solicitors charge for a will dispute, and the SRA's rules requiring firms to publish prices do not extend to contested estates. What is published is the court fee: £663 to issue a non-money claim in the High Court, £387 in the County Court, and a £1,334 trial fee for a multi-track case (GOV.UK EX50). The general rule is that the loser pays the winner's costs, but in probate claims the court can order costs out of the estate where the deceased caused the dispute, or make no order where the circumstances reasonably justified an investigation.
This guide explains what is known — and what is not — about the cost of a dispute over a will, and the rules that decide who ends up paying. It covers England and Wales. Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own courts and rules.
"Contentious probate" is the name for disputes about a will or about who should be given the grant (the court document that lets someone deal with the estate). The wider background, including the grounds for challenging a will, is in our guide to contesting a will, and the terms are explained in what contentious probate means.
No court, regulator or government body publishes what solicitors charge to bring or defend a will dispute, or what such a claim typically costs in total. Figures that appear online are firms' own estimates, not official data, and they vary widely because the work depends on the facts: how many people are involved, whether medical or handwriting experts are needed, and whether the case settles or goes to a trial.
There is a reason no published price list exists. The Solicitors Regulation Authority's Transparency Rules require firms to publish prices for certain services, and one of them is "the collection and distribution of assets belonging to a person following their death" — but only where "the matters are not contested" (rule 1.3(b)). Disputed estates fall outside the rule.
What a solicitor must do is tell you about cost directly. Paragraph 8.7 of the SRA Code of Conduct for Solicitors requires them to ensure that clients receive "the best possible information about how their matter will be priced and, both at the time of engagement and when appropriate as their matter progresses, about the likely overall cost of the matter and any costs incurred." So a costs estimate, and updates as the case moves on, are something a client is entitled to.
Court fees are set by the Civil Proceedings Fees Order 2008 and published by GOV.UK in its civil court fees guide (EX50, updated 13 July 2026):
| Fee | High Court | County Court |
|---|---|---|
| Issuing a claim for something other than money (fee 1.5) | £663 | £387 |
| Hearing fee when a trial date is fixed for a multi-track case (fee 2.1) | £1,334 | £1,334 |
A probate claim asks the court for a grant, or for a decision that a will is or is not valid, rather than for a sum of money, which is why fee 1.5 is the issue fee. Every probate claim is allocated to the multi-track (CPR 57.2(4)). GOV.UK's guide notes that "certain non-money claims will attract the hearing fees" and suggests checking with the court. The Fees Order also says that no fee is payable on a counterclaim that a defendant is required to make under CPR 57.8.
GOV.UK's fee list does not name Inheritance Act 1975 claims separately, so the court office is the place to confirm the fee for one. If you are on a low income, help with court fees may reduce or remove them.
Court fees are usually a small part of the total. Most of the cost of a dispute is the lawyers' fees and any experts' fees, for which, as above, there is no official figure.
Under CPR 44.2, the court has a discretion over whether one party pays another's costs, how much, and when. If it decides to make an order, "the general rule is that the unsuccessful party will be ordered to pay the costs of the successful party; but the court may make a different order."
In practice this means someone who contests a will and loses can be ordered to pay the other side's legal costs as well as their own. In deciding what to do, the court looks at all the circumstances, including the conduct of the parties before and during the case, whether a party succeeded on part of its case, and "whether a party failed to comply with an order for alternative dispute resolution, or unreasonably failed to engage in alternative dispute resolution" (CPR 44.2(5)(e)). Mediation is covered in our guide to mediation in estate disputes.
Qualified one-way costs shifting does not help here. That rule, which limits what a losing claimant has to pay, applies only to claims for damages for personal injury or death (CPR 44.13). A will dispute or an Inheritance Act claim is not one.
In probate claims — disputes about whether a will is valid, or who should have the grant — the courts have long recognised two exceptions to the general rule. They were stated in 1907 by Sir Gorell Barnes P in Spiers v English and are quoted in Kostic v Chaplin [2007] EWHC 2909 (Ch):
"One of those principles is that if a person who makes a will or persons who are interested in the residue have been really the cause of the litigation a case is made out for costs to come out of the estate. Another principle is that, if the circumstances lead reasonably to an investigation of the matter, then the costs may be left to be borne by those who have incurred them."
In plain terms:
Both are discretionary. In Kostic v Chaplin Henderson J described them as "guidelines, not straitjackets", said that a positive case has to be made out before the court departs from the general rule, and noted that the recent trend has been to "narrow rather than extend" the first exception. More recent judgments — Leonard v Leonard [2024] EWHC 979 (Ch) and Burgess v Whittle [2025] EWHC 2829 (Ch) — confirm that the exceptions apply "in probate cases only", that the second exception has not been narrowed in the same way, and that even where one applies, a case can reach a point where it becomes ordinary hostile litigation and costs follow the event from then on. In Burgess v Whittle the court found no room for the second exception and ordered the unsuccessful defendant to pay the claimant's costs.
Two things follow. First, when costs come out of the estate, they reduce what the beneficiaries receive — nobody's bill disappears. Second, whether either exception applies turns on the facts of the case, decided at the end; neither is a promise at the outset.
CPR 57.7(5) gives a defendant in a probate claim a way to have a will tested without running a case against it:
"(a) A defendant may give notice in his defence that he does not raise any positive case, but insists on the will being proved in solemn form and, for that purpose, will cross-examine the witnesses who attested the will. (b) If a defendant gives such a notice, the court will not make an order for costs against him unless it considers that there was no reasonable ground for opposing the will."
"Proved in solemn form" means the court itself decides that the will is valid after hearing evidence, rather than the grant being issued routinely by the Probate Registry. A defendant using this route does not allege anything — such as lack of capacity or undue influence — but requires the people who witnessed the will to give evidence. The costs protection is not absolute: it falls away if the court decides there was no reasonable ground for opposing the will.
An executor or administrator who is a party to proceedings in that role is, under the general rule in CPR 46.3, entitled to be paid their costs out of the estate so far as they are not recovered from anyone else. Practice Direction 46 limits this to costs "properly incurred", which depends among other things on whether they acted in the interests of the estate or for their own benefit, and whether they acted unreasonably. This is another way the cost of a dispute can fall on the estate as a whole.
Part 36 of the Civil Procedure Rules sets out a formal kind of settlement offer that carries costs consequences if it is turned down. It can be made about a whole claim or any issue in it. Under CPR 36.17, unless the court considers it unjust:
An offer that does not follow Part 36 can still be taken into account on costs under CPR 44.2(4)(c). An offer is a matter for the parties and their lawyers; the point here is that turning one down can change who pays.
The rules differ by type of claim:
A claim for reasonable financial provision under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975 does not challenge the will; it asks the court to make provision from the estate. Section IV of CPR Part 57, which governs these claims, contains no special costs rule, and the Spiers v English exceptions described above are applied "in probate cases only". The court's general discretion under CPR 44.2 therefore governs costs in a 1975 Act claim. See our guide to Inheritance Act 1975 claims, and our guide to time limits for the six-month deadline.
Will disputes and Inheritance Act claims are not among the problems GOV.UK lists as covered by civil legal aid. GOV.UK also describes exceptional case funding, available where refusing legal aid would breach your rights under the European Convention on Human Rights; its examples are immigration, family, housing, welfare benefits and inquests. You can check whether you can get legal aid for your problem on GOV.UK.
A conditional fee agreement (CFA) is an agreement under which a lawyer's fees, or part of them, are payable "only in specified circumstances" (section 58 of the Courts and Legal Services Act 1990) — typically if the case succeeds. That is what is usually meant by "no win, no fee", but the phrase can mislead:
A damages-based agreement (DBA) is one where the lawyer is paid a share of the financial benefit the client obtains (section 58AA). Outside personal injury and employment cases, the payment cannot exceed 50% of the sums ultimately recovered, including VAT, at first instance (Damages-Based Agreements Regulations 2013, regulation 4(3)). Like a CFA, it does not cover the other side's costs.
After-the-event (ATE) insurance is taken out once a dispute has arisen, to cover the risk of being ordered to pay the other side's costs. For policies taken out since April 2013, the premium cannot be recovered from the other side as costs, except in some clinical negligence cases (section 58C of the 1990 Act). No official source publishes what ATE premiums cost for will disputes.
If you already have legal expenses insurance — sometimes called before-the-event insurance — its policy wording decides whether a dispute about an estate is covered.
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