Executor duties and responsibilities explained

An executor is the person legally responsible for carrying out the instructions in a will and winding up the estate of someone who has died. The duties, in plain terms, are these: locate the will and register the death, secure and insure the assets, value everything the person owned and owed, report the estate to HMRC and pay any inheritance tax, apply for the grant of probate where it is needed, collect in the money and property, pay the debts and expenses in the right order, distribute what remains to the beneficiaries, and produce estate accounts showing where every pound went. Underpinning all of it is a statutory duty of care: the Trustee Act 2000 requires an executor to exercise such care and skill as is reasonable in the circumstances.

This guide covers England and Wales, with a dedicated section on Scotland, where the terminology and process differ. It walks through each duty in sequence, the specific duties owed to beneficiaries, and what personal liability really means. If you are already weighing up whether to handle the estate yourself or hand it to a professional, our free DIY versus solicitor calculator will tell you which side of that line your estate sits on.

What an executor actually is

The executor's authority comes from the will itself, effective from the moment of death, although banks and the Land Registry will usually want to see a grant of probate before releasing significant assets. Anyone aged 18 or over can act, up to a maximum of four at once, and an executor can also be a beneficiary. That last point causes needless worry: it is entirely normal for a spouse or adult child to be both, and we cover the boundaries in our guide on whether an executor can also be a beneficiary.

One boundary worth stating early: a power of attorney ends at death. If you were acting under a lasting power of attorney for the person, that authority stopped the moment they died, and the executor (which may or may not be you) takes over. The handover is explained in power of attorney vs probate.

Nobody is forced to act. A named executor who has not intermeddled in the estate can renounce entirely, or have power reserved so another executor proceeds alone. If that is where you are, see whether an executor can resign or delegate their duties.

The core duties, in order

1. Register the death and locate the will. Obtain several sealed copies of the death certificate, find the original will (home, solicitor, bank, or the National Will Register) and confirm you are named as executor.
2. Secure the estate. From day one you are responsible for preserving the assets: make sure any empty property is insured and locked, stop unnecessary direct debits, redirect post, and notify banks, insurers, pension providers, utilities and government departments of the death.
3. Value the estate. Every asset and every debt must be valued at the date of death: accounts, property, investments, pensions, business interests, vehicles, personal possessions, less the mortgage, loans and funeral costs. Valuing the estate is a legal requirement even where no tax is due.
4. Deal with inheritance tax. Work out whether tax is due against the £325,000 nil-rate band (frozen until 5 April 2031), the £175,000 residence nil-rate band where a home passes to direct descendants, and the combined married or civil partner threshold of up to £1,000,000. The standard rate is 40%, reduced to 36% where 10% or more of the net estate goes to charity. Tax normally starts being paid by the end of the sixth month after the month of death, before the grant is issued. The thresholds are unpacked in our inheritance tax threshold guide and the wider rules on our inheritance tax pillar. Note for deaths from 6 April 2027: unused pension funds and death benefits enter inheritance tax, and personal representatives are liable for reporting them.
5. Apply for the grant of probate. Not every estate needs one; small estates and jointly held assets often pass without it, as explained in do you need probate if there is a will. Where it is needed, apply online or by post. Estates worth more than £5,000 pay an application fee of £526 (nothing at or below that figure, and £2 per sealed copy ordered with the application). The January to March 2026 official statistics put the average wait at 6.4 weeks overall, 4.5 weeks for the 82.6% of applications made digitally, and 16.5 weeks on paper, though individual waits vary.
6. Collect in the assets. With the grant, close accounts, sell or transfer property and investments, and gather everything into an executorship account kept separate from your own money.
7. Pay debts and expenses. Funeral costs, administration expenses, secured debts, then unsecured debts, all before any beneficiary receives a penny. If the estate cannot cover its debts, stop and take advice: insolvent estates have a strict statutory payment order and personal risk is highest here.
8. Distribute and account. Pay legacies, transfer specific gifts, distribute the residue in the shares the will sets out, and prepare estate accounts for the residuary beneficiaries.

That sequence is the skeleton of the whole role, and the wider process around it is mapped on our probate pillar. If you want it as a working document rather than prose, our executor duties checklist turns each stage into tick-boxes.

Duties owed to beneficiaries

Most guides treat "executor duties" as a list of admin tasks. But executors also owe duties to the beneficiaries themselves, and this is where most family friction starts.

• Impartiality. You must act in the interests of the estate as a whole, not favour one beneficiary (including yourself) over another. Selling estate assets to yourself at undervalue, or delaying a sale to suit one beneficiary's tax position, breaches this duty.
• Reasonable information. Beneficiaries are not entitled to a running commentary, but residuary beneficiaries are entitled to know broadly where things stand and, at the end, to see the estate accounts. A short update at each milestone (grant obtained, property sold, tax cleared) prevents most disputes.
• Proper accounts. The final estate accounts should show everything received, everything paid out and each beneficiary's entitlement. How to prepare them is a topic in its own right, covered in estate accounts for executors.
• No unauthorised profit. Lay executors can recover their expenses but cannot pay themselves for their time unless the will says so. The rules on what you can and cannot charge are in executor fees UK.

Personal liability, and how to protect yourself

Executor liability is personal. If you distribute the estate and an unpaid creditor, an unknown beneficiary or a successful family claim later emerges, the shortfall can come out of your own pocket, even though the money has gone. Three protections do most of the work:

Protection	What it does	What it costs
Section 27 notices (Trustee Act 1925)	Advertising for creditors in The Gazette and a local paper protects you from unknown creditor claims once the two-month notice period expires	Roughly £200 to £300 in advertising fees
Waiting six months from the grant	Claims under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975 must normally be issued within six months of the grant, so distributing after that window removes most of the risk	Time only
Records and advice	Keeping every valuation, letter and receipt, and taking professional advice on anything uncertain (unclear wills, missing beneficiaries, insolvency), evidences that you acted with reasonable care	Varies with the estate

Missing-beneficiary insurance and, where a beneficiary genuinely cannot be traced, paying their share into court are further options for edge cases. The point is not that the role is dangerous; hundreds of thousands of lay executors complete it every year. It is that the protections are cheap, standard and worth using in order.

Executor duties in Scotland

The role exists in Scotland but the framework is different, so an England and Wales checklist will mislead you on the mechanics.

• The court process is called confirmation, not probate, and is granted by the sheriff court rather than a probate registry.
• An executor named in the will is an executor-nominate. Where nobody is validly appointed, the court appoints an executor-dative, who must usually obtain a bond of caution, an insurance policy protecting the estate against maladministration.
• Scots law gives a surviving spouse or civil partner and children legal rights to a fixed share of the moveable estate (money, investments, possessions, but not land or buildings). These apply even where the will leaves them nothing, and the executor must account for them before distributing.
• Small estates below the statutory limit have a simplified confirmation procedure with sheriff clerk assistance.

The underlying duties of care, debt payment and accounting are recognisably the same; it is the vocabulary, the court and the forced-share rules that change.

Do it yourself, or instruct a professional?

Nothing in the role legally requires a solicitor. Executors of simple estates (no inheritance tax, a straightforward will, UK assets, cooperative beneficiaries) routinely complete the job themselves. The case for professional help strengthens with a taxable estate, a property sale, a business, foreign assets, an insolvent estate or family tension, partly because an instructed professional carries insurance for errors that would otherwise land on you. What a professional actually takes off your plate is set out in what does a probate solicitor do, and our DIY versus solicitor calculator gives a quick, personalised steer based on the estate in front of you.

Speak to a specialist

This guide is general information, not legal advice, and every estate has its own wrinkles. If you have been named executor and something about the estate feels beyond a checklist (tax, property abroad, a dispute brewing), we can put you in touch with a vetted probate specialist. Start with our executor hub, or run the DIY versus solicitor calculator first so you arrive at that conversation knowing what you actually need help with.