A probate practice built for the hard estates
Solicitor-led, TEP-qualified, based on Rose Inn Street in Kilkenny, and concentrated on the estates where the stakes and the complications are real.
Who we are
Mary Molloy Solicitors practises from 2 Rose Inn Street in the centre of Kilkenny, with a second office in Dublin. The probate side of the practice is led by Richard O'Shea, Solicitor and TEP, and covers the full span of estate work: grants of probate and administration, estate administration from first letters to final accounts, contested wills and section 117 claims, farm and business estates, cross-border grants, and the trusts that wills create and trustees must then run.
What TEP means, and why it matters here
TEP, Trust and Estate Practitioner, is the designation of full members of STEP, the international professional body for practitioners in trusts, estates and succession. It is earned by examination and practice in exactly the subject matter of this site: wills, the administration of estates, the taxation landscape around them, and the law of trusts. For clients the point is practical rather than ornamental. The estates this practice concentrates on, farms passing between generations, wills under challenge, assets in two jurisdictions, discretionary trusts for vulnerable family members, are precisely where general practice runs out of road and specialist discipline starts paying for itself.
How the practice works
The method is consistent across every file. Candid assessment first: what the estate or the claim actually looks like on the law and the figures, before any positions harden. Documentation always: valuations obtained professionally, decisions recorded with reasons, accounts that reconcile, because in probate the file is the defence. Proportion throughout: most estate disputes should settle, mediation is treated as a professional method rather than a concession, and the practice holds the Law Society Diploma in Mediation alongside its probate credentials. And plain dealing on money: fees are set out in writing under section 150 of the Legal Services Regulation Act 2015 before work begins, and the tax questions that arise in estates are identified clearly and referred for specialist tax advice rather than half-answered.
Where we work
The practice's ground is Kilkenny and the South-East, Carlow, Waterford, Tipperary and Wexford, with grants extracted through the District Probate Registry at Kilkenny and the Probate Office in Dublin as each estate requires. Cross-border estates and foreign-resident executors are served entirely by correspondence, and a substantial share of the practice's administrations run for families who live nowhere near Ireland at all.