Who Pays the Bills While Waiting for Probate?

The deceased's estate is legally responsible for paying all bills during the probate period. The executor or administrator must ensure ongoing costs, including council tax, utilities, insurance, and mortgage payments, are settled from estate funds before distributing anything to beneficiaries.

The practical problem is that estate funds are often frozen until the Grant of Probate is issued. In the interim, executors have several options.

Getting the bills paid before the grant

Most utility companies and councils have bereavement teams that will pause billing or set up a temporary arrangement. Contact them early and explain the situation. You can tell a number of them at once through the Death Notification Service, a free service covering a list of member banks, building societies and other providers.

Some banks allow executors to pay specific urgent bills directly from the deceased's account before probate is granted, under their bereavement process. It is worth asking. Inheritance tax has a formal route of its own: under the Direct Payment Scheme you can ask the bank, building society or investment provider to pay some or all of the tax straight from the deceased's account on form IHT423, and you can start that before the grant. Not every provider takes part. For the funeral and the probate fee there is no equivalent scheme, so it comes down to what each bank's bereavement team will agree to.

The bills are one thing, the inheritance tax is another, and the tax has its own deadline that falls before the grant arrives. I have set out the routes for paying it in do you pay inheritance tax before probate.

Once the grant is issued, the executor opens an estate account and uses it to pay all outstanding costs. Until it arrives, a couple of costs will not wait.

The costs that will not wait

One thing that cannot wait is property insurance. If the property is unoccupied, standard home insurance often lapses. You may need a specific unoccupied property policy to protect the estate's value. Most policies restrict or withdraw cover once a property counts as unoccupied and each insurer sets its own period, so read the wording rather than assuming, and tell the insurer the owner has died.

If the estate has no liquid assets immediately available, beneficiaries may choose to pay bills themselves and claim reimbursement later. Any payments like this must be carefully documented with receipts. Where a beneficiary is living in the property, they are generally expected to cover day-to-day costs themselves. Paying a bill for the estate does not make anyone personally liable for the deceased's debts; the estate reimburses what they lay out, and an executor becomes personally liable only where the estate is distributed before its debts and tax are settled. Whether the executor has to fund the probate costs themselves is a separate question, and I have gone through it in whether the executor has to pay for probate.

Council tax is the other item worth handling early. A property left empty because the person who lived there has died is exempt until probate is granted, and GOV.UK's guidance on empty properties allows a further six months after the grant, as long as the property stays unoccupied and still in the name of the person who died. The rule behind it is the Class F exemption in the Council Tax (Exempt Dwellings) Order 1992, and the six months runs from the date of the grant, not from the date of death. Check with your council, which administers it.

Can you cancel the deceased's direct debits before probate?

Yes, and you should, once you have worked out which ones the estate no longer needs. Tell the bank the account holder has died and ask them to stop the payments for subscriptions, memberships and anything else that stopped being useful on the date of death. Leave the ones that protect the estate, buildings insurance first among them, and keep the utilities running if the property still needs heating or a working alarm. Tell each supplier the position rather than cancelling without a word, because a policy or a supply that lapses on its own is harder to put back than one you paused on purpose.