Executor step by step guide: what to do after being named executor

If you have just learned that you are the executor of someone's will, start with what the role actually is. You are the person legally responsible for winding up their affairs: registering the death, finding the will, valuing everything they owned, applying for probate if it is needed, paying any inheritance tax and debts, and passing what remains to the beneficiaries. You do not need any legal qualification, most executors are family members doing it for the first time, and you can claim reasonable expenses from the estate as you go.

The whole process typically takes somewhere between six months and a year for a straightforward estate, longer where property has to be sold or inheritance tax is due. This guide sets out every stage in order, with realistic timeframes. Before you read the steps, one warning worth its own paragraph: step 1 is a genuine decision, not a formality. If you start handling estate assets before deciding whether you want the role, the law can treat you as having accepted it permanently. To see how long the stages are likely to take for the estate you are dealing with, you can work out a personalised probate timeline in about two minutes with our free estimator. This guide covers England and Wales; Scotland uses a different system (confirmation rather than probate) with different deadlines.

Step 1 (before anything else): decide whether to accept the role

Nobody can force you to be an executor. When you are named in a will you have three options:

• Accept and act. You take on the role and the legal responsibility that comes with it, including personal liability if the estate is administered wrongly.
• Renounce. You give up the role entirely by signing a renunciation (form PA15) and sending it to the probate registry. Renunciation is permanent, you cannot change your mind later without the court's permission.
• Have power reserved. If other executors are named, you can step back and let them act, while keeping the right to join in later if needed. This is a common and sensible middle route.

The timing trap is called intermeddling. If you start doing things only an executor should do, collecting in assets, paying the estate's debts, instructing banks as executor, the law treats you as having accepted the role, and the option to renounce falls away. Arranging the funeral and securing the property do not count as intermeddling, so you can deal with the urgent practical matters while you decide. If you are leaning towards stepping back, our guide to renouncing executorship versus having power reserved compares the two routes in detail.

Step 2 (days 1 to 5): register the death and handle immediate practicalities

In England and Wales a death must normally be registered within 5 days at a register office (the deadline pauses if a coroner is involved). Registration gives you the death certificate; buy several certified copies at the same time, because banks, insurers and pension schemes each tend to want their own.

At the same appointment you will usually be offered Tell Us Once, a free government service that notifies HMRC, the DWP, the DVLA, the Passport Office and the local council in a single step. Use it, it saves weeks of duplicate letters. The other immediate jobs in the first week are practical rather than legal: secure the property and any vehicles, tell the home insurer the property may be empty (unoccupied cover often has conditions), redirect post, and locate the will. The original will may be with a solicitor, a will storage service, or at home; the funeral wishes are often in it, so find it before finalising arrangements where you can. For a fuller walkthrough of this early period, see our companion guide to an executor's first 30 days.

Step 3 (weeks 1 to 4): notify organisations and build a picture of the estate

Write to every bank, building society, pension provider, insurer, lender and utility company the person dealt with, enclosing a copy of the death certificate. Ask each one for the balance or value at the date of death, and whether they will require a grant of probate to release the funds. Their answers do two jobs at once: they give you the valuation figures you will need, and they tell you whether probate is actually required.

Keep records from day one. Open a dedicated folder (paper or digital), log every letter, every valuation and every expense. You are accountable to the beneficiaries for all of it, and good records are what make the final estate accounts straightforward rather than a reconstruction exercise. Executors are entitled to reimburse their reasonable out-of-pocket costs, postage, certified copies, probate fees, travel, from the estate, though lay executors cannot charge for their time unless the will says otherwise; our guide to executor fees and expenses covers where the line sits.

Step 4 (weeks 2 to 6): check whether probate is actually needed

This is the decision fork that competitors' checklists tend to skip. Probate (formally, a grant of probate) is not automatic. It is only needed where an asset holder insists on seeing a grant before releasing or transferring an asset. In practice:

• Jointly owned assets (joint bank accounts, property held as joint tenants) usually pass automatically to the surviving owner by survivorship, no grant needed.
• Small cash balances are often released without a grant. Each bank sets its own threshold, commonly somewhere between £5,000 and £50,000.
• Property in the deceased's sole name almost always requires a grant before it can be sold or transferred.

If everything passes by survivorship or falls under the banks' thresholds, you may be able to skip steps 5 and 6 entirely. Our free do I need probate checker walks through the asset-by-asset logic, and our article on whether you need probate explains the rules in depth.

Step 5 (months 1 to 3): value the estate and deal with inheritance tax

Before applying for probate you must value the estate for HMRC: everything owned (property, accounts, investments, vehicles, personal possessions), minus debts (mortgage, loans, bills, funeral costs), plus gifts made in the 7 years before death. Most estates owe no inheritance tax, the standard nil-rate band is £325,000, the residence nil-rate band can add £175,000 where a home passes to direct descendants, and married couples and civil partners can combine allowances to as much as £1,000,000. Where tax is due it is charged at 40% (36% where 10% or more of the net estate goes to charity), and at least some of it must be paid, or an instalment arrangement set up, before the grant will issue. The gov.uk estate valuation guidance sets out the process, and our guide to the inheritance tax threshold explains the allowances with worked examples.

Step 6 (months 2 to 4): apply for probate

Most executors now apply online through the gov.uk probate service; paper applications use form PA1P. Estates worth £5,000 or less pay no application fee; above that, the fee is £526 (the level set on 13 July 2026). Order sealed copies of the grant at £2 each with the application, one per institution that will need it is a good rule of thumb.

How long does the grant take? Going by the courts' own figures for January to March 2026, a digital application (as 82.6% now are) took 4.5 weeks on average, a paper one 16.5 weeks, and the mean across every channel was 6.4 weeks. Complexity of the estate and registry queries push individual cases either side of those averages, so treat them as central estimates rather than promises. Our guide to probate timescales breaks the figures down stage by stage.

Step 7 (months 3 to 9): administer the estate

Once the grant arrives, the working phase begins. In rough order:

1. Send a sealed copy of the grant to each bank and asset holder and collect in the funds, ideally into a dedicated executor's account kept separate from your own money.
2. Sell or transfer property and other assets as the will directs.
3. Pay all debts, outstanding bills, the funeral account and any remaining tax. Debts come before beneficiaries, always.
4. Consider placing statutory notices for creditors (under section 27 of the Trustee Act 1925) if you are concerned about unknown debts; they protect you from personal liability for claims that surface later.
5. Finalise the deceased's income tax position with HMRC for the period up to death and for the administration period.

Many executors also pause before distributing because claims against the estate under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975 can be brought within six months of the grant. Whether to wait out that window is a judgement call that depends on the family circumstances.

Step 8 (months 6 to 12): distribute and close the estate

With debts and taxes settled, pay any cash legacies first, then distribute the residue (what is left) in the shares the will sets out. Prepare simple estate accounts showing everything that came in, everything that went out, and how the balance was split, and give a copy to the residuary beneficiaries. Get receipts or signed approvals where you can. Once the accounts are approved and the final payments made, the administration is complete.

Common snags: more than one executor, and where the timeline stretches

Where a will names several executors, up to four can take the grant together, and everyone on the grant must act jointly on major steps such as selling property. Families often find it smoother for one executor to apply with power reserved to the others. If a fellow executor is holding things up or wants out, renunciation (before intermeddling) or power reserved usually solves it without court involvement.

The stages above overlap in practice, and the overall span is driven mostly by three things: whether inheritance tax reporting is needed, whether a property must be sold, and how quickly institutions respond. That is exactly what our probate timeline estimator models, so if you want a realistic end-to-end estimate for your estate rather than a generic range, start there.

When to bring in professional help

Plenty of executors complete the whole process themselves, and plenty sensibly hand over the heavy parts, taxable estates, foreign assets, trusts in the will, family tension, to a professional. It is not all or nothing: you can do the practical work and pay for help with the probate application or the tax forms alone. Our comparison of handling probate yourself versus using a solicitor sets out where the line tends to fall. If you would like to talk it through, we can connect you with a vetted probate specialist for a no-obligation conversation, and our executor hub gathers all of our guides and free tools in one place. This article is general information for England and Wales, not legal advice.