Table of Contents

1: Introduction to will drafting
2: Basic elements of a will and mutual wills
3: The legal personal representative
4: Will drafting - the rights of spouses/civil partners, cohabitants and children
5: Instructions, attendance and execution
6: Introduction to administration of estates
7: Introduction to probate practice
8: Extracting a grant of administration with will annexed
9: Extracting a grant of administration intestate
10: Second and subsequent grants ('de bonis non' grants)
11: Non-contentious applications (either to the Probate Officer or to the Court)
12: Administration after the grant has issued
13: Beneficiaries including: spouses/civil partners, cohabitants and children of the deceased
14: Obligations, duties and claims on the estate
15: Distributing the estate, vesting of property and finalising matters

About the Author

Padriac Courtney qualified as a solicitor in 1994 and works for the Law Society's Law School as a course manager, specialising in Probate and Taxation. He holds the Law Society Diploma in Property Tax. Nuala Casey was admitted as a solicitor in 1977 and is a consultant solicitor with Groarke & Partners. She has extensive experience in the area of Probate Practice. She is a consultant, tutor and internal examiner for the Law Society of Ireland's Professional
Practice courses, and is editor and co-author of Conveyancing (OUP, 2016). Annette O'Connell currently holds the statutory position of Probate Officer in the Courts Service. A civil servant for the past
twenty-nine years, she has worked in the Central Office of the High Court, the Taxing Master's Office and the Probate Office. Anne Stephenson is the principal of Stephenson Solicitors, a specialist practice providing an advisory service for solicitors and financial institutions in the area of wills, trusts, probate, administration of estates and tax planning. She is a co-author of Conveyancing (OUP, 2016) and Capital Taxation for Solicitors (OUP, 2011), and regularly contributes articles to
various other publications, including the Law Society Gazette, the Parchment Magazine and the Tax Review.