The One Bermuda Alliance has called for an update on staffing and training levels in the Supreme Court’s probate office.

Robin Tucker, the Opposition leader in the Senate, spoke out following reports last year of families facing significant delays in the processing of the estates of dead relatives.

The build up of cases — some of which dated back to 2019 — was blamed on a lack of staff and insufficient resources.

Speaking during the Motion to Adjourn in the Senate today, Ms Tucker said that the delays were a national “embarrassment”.

Ms Tucker said: “Unless I missed it, we’ve seen no update on any progress that has been made to improve the processing times for probate applications.

“At last report, processing those probate applications was well over a year behind and the key reason that had been identified was staffing shortages.

“It would be good to know whether there have been any steps to address those staffing shortages in terms of hiring and training people in order to bring about improvements and speeding up the processes for processing probate applications.

“As I understand it, processing applications can take anywhere between 12 and 18 months and that’s relatively average. Some time ago, it was around nine months, which is still a long time.

“I’m looking at it from the point of view of how the families will be feeling. Imagine a spouse makes a will and they’re doing it to ensure that after their passing that the surviving spouse is taken care of.

“Certainly if the deceased spouse’s name is on everything — the house, the bank accounts and so on — how then does the surviving spouse … let’s say they have a young family, how are they to pay school fees and things when they can’t access the funds in the bank account?

“Also, when we consider seniors, how does the spouse survive day-to-day and meet their other financial commitments.

“Looking at it from the family’s point of view, I have to wonder what attempts have been made to bring up those staffing levels, to get the training done so that we can reduce some of the suffering and the burdens that families are having to bear from delays.

“The matter needs to be looked at through the eyes of those who are most affected — the families.

“Wait times of 12 to 18 months are quite ridiculous and the impact to those families having to wait, in some cases for a couple of years, is unacceptable.

“As a country, we should feel embarrassed that we have such extensive wait times that we have families who experience loss to go through further suffering by delaying the probate process.

“We can and we need to do better. I would look forward to there being an update as to where things are and hopefully that update speaks to significant improvements being made.”

None of the Government senators spoke during the Motion to Adjourn or offered to provide the Opposition with an update at a later date.