Executor fees in the UK: what can you charge?

The short answer

In England and Wales, a lay executor, meaning a family member, friend or anyone else who is not acting in a professional capacity, cannot charge a fee for their time. The role is unpaid by default. What a lay executor can do is reclaim reasonable out-of-pocket expenses from the estate: court fees, travel, postage, valuations and similar costs, all repaid before beneficiaries receive anything.

The position changes in two situations. First, if the will contains a charging clause, the executor can charge on whatever terms the clause allows, and in practice these clauses are written for professionals. Second, professional executors such as solicitors, accountants and trust corporations can charge for their services under sections 28 and 29 of the Trustee Act 2000, which section 35 of the same Act applies to personal representatives administering estates. Executor fees are one line in the wider cost of dealing with an estate, so before going further it is worth spending two minutes with our probate cost calculator to see what the whole process is likely to cost for your estate, with and without professional help.

Lay executors: expenses yes, fees no

The starting point of the law is old and simple: an executor is a fiduciary, someone trusted to act in the interests of others, and fiduciaries do not profit from their position unless expressly authorised. That is why your sister, your neighbour or your adult child cannot invoice the estate £30 an hour for the (often considerable) work of administering an estate, however fair that might feel.

What every executor can do is recover expenses. Section 31 of the Trustee Act 2000 entitles a trustee, and through section 35 a personal representative, to be reimbursed from the fund for expenses properly incurred when acting on its behalf. Typical examples:

• The probate application fee, currently £526 for estates over £5,000, plus £2 for each sealed copy of the grant ordered with the application.
• Extra copies of the death certificate.
• Probate valuations of the house, contents or shares.
• Travel to secure, clear or check the property, and house insurance while the estate owns it.
• Postage, phone calls and statutory notices to creditors.
• Professional help the estate genuinely needed, for example an accountant for the final income tax return.

Two words carry all the weight: "properly incurred". First class flights to clear a flat that could have been handled locally will be questioned. Keep every receipt and a simple running log. Beneficiaries are entitled to see the estate accounts, and an expense you cannot evidence is an expense you may end up bearing personally.

Lost earnings do not count

A common and painful surprise: time off work to deal with the estate is not a recoverable expense. It is exactly the kind of personal time cost the no-fee rule excludes. If the workload looks heavy, the realistic choices are to instruct a professional for some or all of the work (a cost the estate does bear, see our guide to whether you need a solicitor for probate) or to agree compensation with the beneficiaries, covered below.

When the will says you can charge

A charging clause is a provision in the will authorising an executor to charge for their services. Professionally drafted wills that appoint a solicitor, a firm or a bank as executor almost always contain one, because without it the appointment would be commercially pointless. Section 28 of the Trustee Act 2000 supports these clauses: where the will contains a charging provision and the executor is a trust corporation or is acting in a professional capacity, the executor can be paid under it, even for work a lay person could have done. The Act also treats such payments as remuneration rather than a gift, which matters because it means a professional executor's fee is not lost merely because someone at their firm witnessed the will.

If you are making a will and want a family member to be paid for the executor role, you can say so. A clause allowing a named lay executor to charge reasonable compensation, or simply a fixed legacy "to my executor for their trouble", is valid. This is a drafting decision worth making deliberately when you put your will together, particularly where one child will carry the whole administrative burden.

When there is no charging clause

Without a charging clause, section 29 of the Trustee Act 2000 still lets some executors charge reasonable remuneration:

• A trust corporation (for example a bank's trustee company) can charge without anyone's consent.
• A professional executor can charge only if they are not the sole personal representative and every other personal representative agrees in writing.

Note the trap in the second limb: a solicitor appointed as the only executor of a home-made will with no charging clause has no statutory right to charge, because there are no co-executors to consent. In practice the beneficiaries usually agree fees, or the solicitor renounces and the family instructs a firm on normal terms instead, but the default is stricter than most people expect.

The lay executor who deserves paying

What about the daughter who spends eighteen months administering a complicated estate with no charging clause? The law gives her expenses only, but the beneficiaries can give her more. If all the adult residuary beneficiaries agree, they can pay her an agreed sum out of their own shares, ideally recorded in writing, and where the sums are significant a deed of variation can formalise it. What she must not do is simply pay herself from the estate and hope nobody minds. Unauthorised payment is a breach of duty, and she can be required to repay it.

What professional executors actually charge

Professional fees follow the same three models as probate work generally, covered in detail in our guide to probate solicitor costs: hourly rates of roughly £150 to £350 plus VAT, fixed fees agreed at the outset, or a percentage of the gross estate, commonly 1% to 5%. What the bare ranges hide is how differently they land on different estates. Three worked examples:

Scenario	Estate	Likely professional fee	Comment
Small, simple estate	£120,000: one bank account, some savings, no property	Roughly £1,500 to £3,000 plus VAT on an hourly or fixed basis	A 2% percentage fee (£2,400) is similar here, but many families handle an estate like this themselves for little more than the £526 court fee
Typical estate with a house	£500,000: house, savings, shares, three beneficiaries	Perhaps £5,000 to £10,000 plus VAT hourly; 2% would be £10,000	The percentage model starts to overcharge simple but valuable estates, because the fee scales with value, not work
Complex estate	£900,000: house, a small business, foreign account, full inheritance tax reporting	Often £15,000 plus VAT and upwards, however priced	Here professional handling usually justifies its cost: business valuation, IHT reliefs and HMRC correspondence are where errors get expensive

Whoever charges, the fee is paid from the estate as an administration expense before beneficiaries are paid, a priority confirmed for personal representatives by section 35 of the Trustee Act 2000. It is not paid by the executor personally, and it is deducted from the residue, so the people who really pay are the residuary beneficiaries. That is also why they have standing to object.

The real trade-off: free but slow, or paid but done

Framing this purely as "fees" misses the decision families actually face. A lay executor is free but is learning the job as they go, carries personal liability for mistakes, and often takes longer. A professional costs real money but works through the probate process daily, and on a complex estate that speed and accuracy can be worth more than the fee. Our guide to what a probate solicitor actually does sets out where the hours go, and the DIY versus solicitor tool compares the two routes for your specific estate. Many families land in the middle: the lay executor does the legwork and buys in professional help only for the technical pieces, which keeps fees proportionate.

Challenging a fee that looks too high

Beneficiaries are not powerless. Executors must account for their administration, and residuary beneficiaries can ask for estate accounts showing every expense and fee. Where a professional's charges look excessive, the fees can be assessed by the court, and firms regulated in England and Wales must publish their probate pricing, which gives a benchmark. Where a lay executor has taken money without authority, the beneficiaries can require repayment. In practice most disagreements resolve at the accounts stage: an executor who has kept receipts, agreed the fee basis in writing at the outset, and communicated as the administration went along rarely faces a serious challenge. This article covers England and Wales; Scotland has its own rules on executors' remuneration and expenses, so take Scottish guidance for a Scottish estate.

Getting help

If you are weighing up whether to charge, what you can reclaim, or whether the estate should pay for professional help, start by putting numbers on it with the probate cost calculator, then look at our resources for executors. If the estate is complex or a fee dispute is brewing, we can introduce you to a vetted probate specialist, with no obligation attached. This article is general information about the law in England and Wales, not advice on your specific situation.