No will changes the paperwork; no assets changes the answer
A death without a will and a death without assets sound like the same predicament, but only the missing assets can make a grant unnecessary. If there is no will, a grant is usually still needed and someone still has to apply for it. What changes is the name and the applicant: the court issues a grant of letters of administration rather than a grant of probate, and the intestacy rules decide who is entitled to apply and who inherits. If there are genuinely no assets to unlock, or everything was held jointly and has already passed to the survivor, then there may be nothing to apply for at all.
Sort the two apart before you do anything else, because they lead to completely different afternoons. This page covers England and Wales and is general information rather than legal or financial advice. If you want a structured run through your own facts, the do I need probate checker walks the asset-by-asset test question by question, and the wider question of how to make the call is covered in our guide to how to know if you need probate.
No will: the grant has a different name, not a different purpose
An executor derives authority from the will and the grant of probate confirms it. With no valid will there is no executor, so nobody has authority until the court gives it. That comes through letters of administration, applied for on form PA1A rather than PA1P. Our comparison of grant of probate versus letters of administration sets out the differences in full.
Two consequences follow, and they surprise families in equal measure.
The order of applicants is fixed. GOV.UK's guidance on applying when there is not a will states that "the most entitled person can apply to become the administrator of the estate", which is "the closest living relative, normally the husband, wife or civil partner (including if you were separated) followed by any children 18 or over (including legally adopted children but not step-children)". Being the most organised sibling, or the one who lived nearest, carries no weight.
The intestacy rules decide who inherits. For deaths on or after 26 July 2023, HMRC's manual at IHTM12122 confirms the statutory legacy is £322,000. A surviving spouse or civil partner takes the personal possessions and that first £322,000 outright, then half of anything above it, with the children sharing the other half. Where there is no spouse, the children take everything. Our guide to who inherits if there is no will works through the full order.
No assets: this is the answer that actually removes the grant
A grant exists to unlock assets held in the deceased's sole name. No sole assets means no lock to open. GOV.UK lists the situations where you may not need probate: where the person "only had savings", "owned shares or money with others" or "owned land or property as joint tenants with others", because in the last two cases the asset "automatically passes to the surviving owners".
| What the person left | Grant usually needed? |
|---|---|
| Home owned as joint tenants with a surviving co-owner | No, it passes by survivorship |
| Joint bank or building society account | No, the balance passes to the surviving account holder |
| Home owned as tenants in common, or in a sole name | Yes |
| Sole account balances above the bank's own release limit | Yes |
| Nothing in a sole name, or only small sole balances | No |
Survivorship is doing the heavy lifting in the top two rows, and it operates whether or not there is a will: it sits outside the estate entirely. The mechanics are covered in jointly owned assets and probate and in joint bank accounts and survivorship. Each bank also sets its own threshold for releasing a sole balance without a grant, and those limits vary widely between institutions, which is why two estates of similar size can reach opposite answers. Our page on probate for bank accounts, ISAs and life insurance deals with those thresholds.
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A case where both answers apply at once
Ray, 61, died suddenly without a will. He had lived with his partner Dee for fourteen years. Their flat was owned as joint tenants, and their current account was in joint names. Ray also had a sole savings account holding £4,200 and a car worth about £3,000. His only surviving relative was a brother, Colin.
- The flat and the joint account: both pass to Dee by survivorship on the date of death. No grant, no intestacy, no forms.
- The £4,200 and the car: sole assets, so intestacy applies. The building society agrees to release the balance against a death certificate and an indemnity because it falls under its own limit, and the car can be transferred without a grant. So no letters of administration are needed.
- Who gets the £7,200: Colin, not Dee. Under the intestacy rules a cohabiting partner inherits nothing, however long the relationship, as our page on intestacy and unmarried partners explains.
Ray's estate needed no grant at all, yet the absence of a will still changed who ended up with money. That is the distinction worth holding onto: "no grant needed" answers an administrative question, while "no will" answers a distribution question.
If you do need one, and if there is nothing but debt
Where a grant is required, the fee is the same with or without a will. GOV.UK's fees page gives £526 where the estate is over £5,000 and no fee at all where it is £5,000 or less, with extra sealed copies at £2 each when ordered with the application and £16 each afterwards. Order enough copies up front: institutions will each want their own.
If the sums point the other way and the debts exceed the assets, the estate is insolvent and a grant is rarely the right first step. Do not pay creditors out of your own pocket or in the wrong order. Our guide to insolvent estates sets out the statutory payment order and the personal risk of getting it wrong.
Intestacies get complicated quickly where the entitled applicant does not want to act, where minor children are entitled to a share (which brings a trust into play), or where the family structure is not the one the statutory order assumes. A probate specialist can confirm who is entitled to apply and whether a grant is needed before anyone fills in a form. Start with our probate pillar guide for the full process, or run your figures through the do I need probate checker to see which of the two questions is really the one holding you up.