The Courts Service of Ireland has said it will “modernise and transform the current process, making it easier and more efficient to complete”.

Under the new system, solicitors and personal applicants, such as executors or administrators of an estate, will be required to submit their Inland Revenue Affidavit online in advance of lodging their application for a grant of representation with the Probate Office and the District Probate Registries.

The changes to the current process are:

1. Applicants seeking to apply for grants of probate or letters of administration will need to complete and submit to Revenue the new online version of the Inland Revenue Affidavit, called the Statement of Affairs (Probate) Form SA.2. This can be done by logging in to Revenue’s Online Service (ROS) or MyAccount which can be accessed via www.revenue.ie.
2. A Revenue acknowledgement document will auto-generate for the applicant once the form is successfully completed and submitted electronically. This acknowledgement document is called the Notice of Acknowledgement (Probate) and will contain headline information from the form for use by the Probate Office.
3. An applicant will be required to print this acknowledgement and submit it to the Probate Office, along with the other required papers in order to obtain a Grant of Probate or Letters of Administration.

In a statement on its website, the Courts Service said: “It is expected that the governing regulations will be signed into law and the new online form available by mid-September 2020. Once the online form is available, the Probate Office can only accept new applications that include Revenue’s acknowledgment document. This means there will be no option available to submit an Inland Revenue Affidavit to the Probate Office for approval.

“In preparation for the move to the online Statement of Affairs the Probate Office, from Friday 4th September 2020 will no longer accept applications with CA24s.

“The service is currently in development and further updates/information on the new process and the online form will be provided by both Revenue and the Courts Service in the coming weeks.”