probate, in Anglo-American law, the judicial proceedings by which it is determined whether or not a paper purporting to be the last will of a deceased person is the legally valid last will. What appears to be a valid will may not be so: it may have been forged, not executed in the way required by law, signed by the testator while mentally incompetent or under duress, or subsequently revoked. If the document is held to be genuine and valid, it is admitted to probate; otherwise its admission is refused. Until it has been so admitted, it cannot be used for any legal purposes; in particular, the person nominated as executor cannot function, and the court must appoint an administrator of the estate.
The idea that the genuineness and validity of a will should be investigated and determined in special proceedings was developed in England by the ecclesiastical courts, which in the Middle Ages had acquired jurisdiction over succession to personal property. No such idea had been worked out by the secular courts, which had jurisdiction over the descent of real property. In America, secular courts were set up to deal with probate matters, and in the 19th century their jurisdiction was extended to cover the problem of the validity of a will with respect to real property. The same step was taken in England in 1897, after jurisdiction had been transferred in 1857 from the ecclesiastical to the secular courts.
Under the rules in the English courts, probate can be granted simply upon the presentation of a document presenting the outward appearance of a will properly executed. Such probate “in the common form” was revocable, however, if within 30 years doubts were raised as to the validity of the document, or if an interested party had entered a caveat (asked to have his objections heard) before the probate had been granted. In these cases the person interested in having the document admitted to probate had to prove it “in the solemn form.” Probate in the solemn form is a regular judicial proceeding in which the facts needed to establish the validity of the document must be proved, ordinarily through testimony by witnesses.
The English pattern is also that of the other common-law parts of the Commonwealth and, basically, also that of the United States. Under the pattern prevailing in most states in the United States, the document purporting to be a will is admitted to probate in a special court, usually called the probate court. Proceedings require little proof but occasionally allow the adjudication of a limited range of objections. Any interested party, however, may have the probate revoked if he prevails in a will contest; this must be raised, usually in a court higher than the probate court, within a short period fixed by statute. In most states the courts acting in probate matters also supervise the administration and distribution of a deceased’s estate by an executor, or administrator; in addition, they have jurisdiction over the guardianship of infants and the conservation of the estates of mentally incompetent persons.