Executor Duties in Order, and Where You Are Personally Liable

An executor’s duties run in a set order: register the death, secure the property, find the will, assets and debts, value the estate, deal with inheritance tax, apply for probate, collect everything in, pay the debts and taxes, prepare the accounts, and only then distribute. Take a step out of order and the bill can land on you personally.

GOV.UK says that as a personal representative you are legally responsible for the money, property and possessions of the person who died, from the date of death until everything has passed to the beneficiaries.

Stepping Down as Executor Before You Start

Nobody has to act as executor. If you would rather not, decide early, because the options narrow once you start handling the estate.

Where more than one executor is named, you can hold what is called power reserved. It means choosing not to apply now while keeping the right to apply later, and you tell the applying executor in writing. You stay an executor in name, and you can step in if the others cannot carry on.

If you want out for good, that is renunciation, done on form PA15. Renunciation is meant for executors who have not yet dealt with the estate, so if you have already been paying bills from the deceased’s account or clearing the house, take advice before you sign it.

There is a third route. A sole executor, or one whose co-executors have all reserved power or renounced, can use form PA11 to appoint someone to apply for probate on their behalf. You can also stay the executor and have a professional do the work for you, which needs no form at all.

Executor Duties in the Order They Fall

1. Register the death. In England and Wales the death has to be registered within 5 days of the medical examiner’s office confirming you can, and the 5 days include weekends and bank holidays.
2. Secure the house and belongings. Lock the property, tell the insurer it is empty, redirect the post, and keep anyone from removing things until the will has been found and checked.
3. Find the will, the assets and the debts. You must send the original will with the probate application, and a photocopy will not do. List every bank account, pension, policy, property and creditor.
4. Value the estate at the date of death. How a house and its contents are valued is set out in my guide to probate valuation.
5. Report and pay inheritance tax. Where tax is owed, or the estate does not count as an excepted estate, the IHT400 has to go in before you apply for probate and within a year at the latest. The tax itself is due by the end of the sixth month after the death.
6. Apply for the grant. The court fee is £526 for an estate over £5,000, and the grant usually arrives within 12 weeks of applying.
7. Collect in the estate. Close the accounts, cash the policies, and sell or transfer the property. What can be lined up before the grant arrives is covered in my guide to selling a house before probate.
8. Pay the debts, the funeral and the tax, including income tax and capital gains tax for the months the estate is open.
9. Prepare the estate accounts, showing everything that came in and went out, and send them to the residuary beneficiaries to approve before the final payment.
10. Distribute to the beneficiaries.

Four of these steps carry personal risk when they are rushed or skipped: the inheritance tax, the tax on the estate’s income and gains, the creditors, and the timing of the payout.

Inheritance Tax Falls Due Before the Grant Arrives

Families are often surprised that HMRC wants paying before the court has given anyone the authority to sell anything. The sixth-month deadline runs from the date of death, so a death in January means tax due by 31 July.

Miss it and interest starts. HMRC’s late-payment rate has been 7.75% since 9 January 2026, and it accrues on the unpaid tax until it is cleared. Beneficiaries are entitled to ask why the estate paid that interest.

The figures do not stop moving once the IHT400 is filed. GOV.UK expects you to tell HMRC about changes once the values are final or 18 months after the death, whichever comes first, and HMRC can ask to see your records up to 20 years after the tax is paid. I tell every executor to keep the file long after the last cheque has cleared.

Income Tax and Capital Gains During the Administration

The estate keeps earning after the death. Rent, savings interest and dividends all count, and you must pay income tax on the full amount the estate receives between the day after the death and the date everything has been distributed, with no personal allowances to set against it. If that income is £500 or less in a tax year, there is nothing to report.

Above that, a smaller estate can settle up by letter to HMRC at the end, provided the estate was worth less than £2.5 million, the income tax and capital gains tax together come to less than £10,000, and no more than £500,000 of assets were sold in any single tax year. Outside those limits, you register the estate with HMRC online and file a Trust and Estate tax return for it.

Selling the house or shares for more than their probate value can bring capital gains tax once costs and the £3,000 annual allowance are taken off. Personal representatives pay 24% on gains from 6 April 2026, and tax on a gain from residential property usually has to be reported and paid within 60 days of completion. That is separate from the deceased’s own final tax return for the part-year before they died, which is also yours to deal with where one is needed.

How Long an Executor Has to Finish

The one fixed point in the law is the executor’s year: you are not bound to pay the beneficiaries before twelve months from the death, and I cover how that works, and when holding back becomes a problem, on the page about an executor withholding money from a beneficiary. In practice the inheritance tax deadline above sets the pace for the first six months, and the creditor and family-claim periods below set it for the rest.

Where Executors Become Personally Liable

Paying Beneficiaries Before the Debts Are Settled

The single most common mistake I see is an executor paying the family before the estate’s own bills are settled. If you distribute the estate without keeping enough back, you may have to pay any remaining debts and tax bills yourself.

An interim payment feels kind. Made before the tax and the creditors are known, it is a loan from your own pocket that you may never get back.

Creditors Who Come Forward After the Payout

The protection against unknown creditors is a deceased estates notice. Section 27 of the Trustee Act 1925 lets an executor advertise in the Gazette, and in a local newspaper where the estate holds land, giving creditors a period of not less than two months to come forward. GOV.UK tells executors to place the notice in The Gazette and not to distribute until the two months are up.

Once the period has run, section 27(2) says you are not liable to a creditor whose claim you had no notice of when you distributed, provided you have also made the searches a buyer of the property would make. The creditor can still follow the money into the hands of the beneficiaries who received it. Skip the notice, and a debt that surfaces a year later can become yours to pay.

Family Claims Under the 1975 Act

A spouse or civil partner, a former spouse who has not remarried, a partner who lived with them for the two years before the death, a child, or someone the person who died was supporting can claim under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975 if they feel the will or the intestacy rules left them without reasonable provision. Section 4 of the Act gives them six months from the date of the grant, and the court can allow a claim later.

Section 20 protects an executor who distributes after those six months from being blamed for a late claim, although the money can still be recovered from whoever received it. Distribute inside the six months while a claim is in the air, and that protection is gone.

Inheritance Tax Paid Late or Short

Inheritance tax is a charge on the estate, but the executor is the person HMRC deals with. If you have paid out the estate and a revised valuation or a missed asset then produces more tax, the same rule applies as for unpaid debts, and you may have to pay it yourself. Interest runs on anything paid late, and GOV.UK warns of a financial penalty for inaccurate information in the account.

Can an Executor Charge for Their Time?

A family member or friend acting as executor can claim reasonable out-of-pocket expenses from the estate, but cannot charge for their time unless the will contains a charging clause. I explain what can be claimed back, and how the court fee is met, on the page about whether the executor has to pay for probate.

When to Hand the Administration to a Professional

Plenty of executors manage a simple estate themselves. The ones who call me tend to have a house to sell, an inheritance tax bill, a creditor they are unsure about, or a family member who is unhappy with the will.

I handle the full administration for a fixed fee of £1,880: the valuations, the inheritance tax forms, the grant application, collecting in the assets, settling the debts and the final distribution. You deal with me directly throughout. The details are on my probate assistance page.

If you have been named as an executor and want to talk through where you stand, call me on 020 8669 1779, or leave your details and I will call you back.