Section 27 notices in probate: the two-month creditor advert explained

Two months of public notice before you hand anything out

A section 27 notice, often called a deceased estates notice, is a public advertisement that an executor or administrator places under section 27 of the Trustee Act 1925. It appears in The Gazette (and, where the estate includes land, in a newspaper circulating in the district where that land is situated) and invites anyone with a claim against the estate to come forward within a stated period of at least two months. Once that period expires, the personal representative can distribute the estate knowing they will not be personally liable for debts they had no notice of.

One sentence of small print matters more than everything else on this page, so here it is up front. The notice protects the executor from unknown creditors. It does not protect the estate itself, it does not stop a creditor pursuing the beneficiaries who received the money, and it does absolutely nothing to help you find a beneficiary you cannot locate. Everything in this guide (which is general information, not legal or financial advice) comes back to that distinction, because it is the point most often misunderstood. This page covers England and Wales.

What section 27 actually requires

The section, headed "Protection by means of advertisements", lets trustees and personal representatives give notice of their intention to distribute. To get the protection, the notice must:

• be published in The Gazette (the official public record, the London Gazette for England and Wales);
• where the estate includes land, also appear in a newspaper circulating in the district where the land is situated;
• require anyone interested to send in particulars of their claim within a fixed time, "not being less than two months" from the notice.

After the stated period ends, the executor may distribute the estate "having regard only to the claims, whether formal or not, of which the trustees or personal representatives then had notice". In plain terms: debts you knew about must still be paid, but a debt nobody told you about within the window cannot come back to bite you personally once the money has gone out. The notice can be placed before the grant of probate is issued, so a well-organised executor often publishes it in the first weeks of the administration and lets the clock run while other work continues. Our first 30 days guide for executors slots the notice into that early timetable.

What it protects against, and what it does not

Section 27 is narrower than most people assume, and the statute itself spells out the limits. Subsection (2) preserves "the right of any person to follow the property... into the hands of any person, other than a purchaser, who may have received it". A creditor who misses the deadline loses their claim against the executor personally, but not their claim altogether.

Situation	Does a section 27 notice help?
Unknown creditor appears after distribution	Yes. The executor is not personally liable, provided the notice ran its full period and the debt was genuinely unknown.
Creditor the executor already knew about	No. Known debts must be paid before distribution. The notice only covers claims the executor had no notice of.
Creditor pursuing the beneficiaries who received the assets	No. The claimant can still follow the property into the beneficiaries' hands. The shield is personal to the executor.
A beneficiary the executor could not find	No. Section 27 is a creditor mechanism. Missing beneficiaries need genealogist tracing, missing beneficiary insurance or a court direction, not a Gazette advert.
Family provision claim under the Inheritance Act 1975	No. That regime has its own six-month window from the grant, discussed below.

The last two rows deserve repeating because they are the ones that catch executors out. A section 27 notice shields the personal representative from unknown creditors; it is not a tool for dealing with beneficiaries you cannot trace, and placing one does not discharge your duty to distribute to the right people. If the estate's debts might exceed its assets, the stakes rise sharply, and our companion guide to insolvent estates explains the statutory order in which creditors must then be paid.

A worked example: the £9,200 loan nobody knew about

Daniel and his sister Ruth are executors of their father's £340,000 estate: a £250,000 house, £80,000 of savings and £10,000 of contents. They pay the funeral, clear the utility bills and the credit card they found statements for, and distribute the rest equally between themselves and their two cousins, roughly £82,000 each after expenses.

Five months later a finance company writes: their father had guaranteed a £9,200 business loan for an old friend, the friend has defaulted, and the estate is liable.

If Daniel and Ruth placed a section 27 notice and waited out the two months before distributing, they have no personal liability. The finance company's remaining route is to pursue the four beneficiaries for a share of the £9,200 out of what each received. Awkward, but nobody is paying out of money they never had.

If they did not place a notice, the company can claim the £9,200 from Daniel and Ruth personally as the executors who distributed without settling all debts. They would then have to ask the cousins to hand back a contribution, with no guarantee of cooperation. For a notice that costs less than £120 plus VAT, the asymmetry is stark. Note what the notice changed and what it did not: the debt itself survived either way, and the beneficiaries remained exposed either way. Only the executors' personal position changed. That is the whole function of section 27.

Cost, and how to place one

The Gazette's 2026 price list charges £96.55 plus VAT for a deceased estates notice submitted through its webform or template, or £131.70 plus VAT for other formats. You will need the death certificate details, the deceased's full name, address and dates, and the executor's or solicitor's contact address for claims. Where the estate includes land, the local newspaper notice is arranged directly with the paper, and each title sets its own advertising rates, so ask for a quote rather than assuming a figure.

Whether the spend is worthwhile depends on the estate. An executor who is also the sole beneficiary gains little, since the assets end up in the same hands the creditor would pursue anyway. Executors distributing to others, professional executors, and anyone administering an estate with a self-employed, business-owning or financially untidy deceased should treat the notice as near-essential. It is a modest line in the overall administration budget, and you can see where it sits among the other charges with our probate cost calculator.

Section 27 is not the only clock running

The two-month creditor window sits alongside a separate and longer timetable. Under section 4 of the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975, a family member or dependant left without reasonable provision can apply to court within six months of the grant of representation, and the court can permit later claims. A section 27 notice gives no protection against these applications, which is why cautious executors often hold the estate for at least six months from the grant (and frequently ten, to allow for an issued claim being served late) even after the Gazette period has expired. Our guide to Inheritance Act 1975 claims covers who can apply and how the court decides, and how long probate takes puts both waiting periods into the wider timeline.

Where this fits in the executor's job

Placing the notice is one task in a longer sequence: registering the death, valuing the estate, applying for the grant, settling tax, then distributing. The probate pillar guide maps the whole process, and the executors hub collects the duties that carry personal risk, of which unknown debts are only one. To say it a final time, because it is the point this notice is most often wrongly relied on for: section 27 protects the personal representative from creditors nobody knew existed. It does not locate missing beneficiaries, and it does not extinguish a genuine debt, which can still follow the assets to whoever inherited them.

If the estate you are administering has murky finances, a business, guarantees, or beneficiaries you cannot trace, those are exactly the circumstances where a probate specialist earns their fee by keeping you off the personal liability hook. We can put you in touch with one who handles estate administration risk day in, day out, so you can distribute with a clear conscience and a paper trail to match.