Who can be an executor?
Anyone aged eighteen or over with mental capacity, including a beneficiary. A will can name a spouse, an adult child, a sibling or anyone else, and naming two means one can act if the other cannot. A will can appoint as many executors as it likes, but no more than four can take the grant for the same part of the estate: section 114(1) of the Senior Courts Act 1981 says probate or administration shall not be granted to more than four persons in respect of the same part of an estate (checked 20 September 2026). The others can have power reserved. Professionals can be named too, and where a will names a firm, who can take the grant turns on how the appointment clause is worded and how it is read, rather than on any rule of the probate rules. A clause appointing the partners in a named firm is generally read as appointing the individuals who are partners at the relevant time, and can extend to a successor practice, as it did in In the Estate of Rogers [2006] EWHC 753 (Ch); the four person limit applies to them as to anyone else (checked 20 September 2026).
A person named as executor does not have to act. They can renounce before doing anything that looks like taking on the role, on a signed form lodged with the probate registry, or they can have power reserved, which keeps the door open to step in later. What they cannot do is take the job, start dealing with the estate and then walk away. Once an executor has intermeddled, renouncing is no longer open to them: anyone interested in the estate can cite them to take the grant, under rule 47(3) of the Non-Contentious Probate Rules 1987, at any time from six months after the death, and getting out then means asking the court to remove them under section 50 of the Administration of Justice Act 1985. Arranging the funeral does not count, nor do steps taken simply to keep the estate safe, such as insuring a house or listing what there is. Selling assets, paying debts out of estate money or collecting in what is owed does count. There is a price attached as well: someone who takes control of estate assets before a grant can be held personally liable for the deceased's debts up to the value of what they took, under section 28 of the Administration of Estates Act 1925, and can be treated as accountable for the estate's inheritance tax.
What powers does an executor have over a property?
The property vests in the executor from death. That gives the executor the power to insure it, secure it, sell it, let it, or pass it to the beneficiary the will names. A sale can be agreed and contracts exchanged before the grant, but it is completed by the executor signing the TR1 as seller once the grant has issued, because without it the executor cannot prove title to the buyer or register the transfer. A transfer to a beneficiary uses an assent on form AS1 instead, and no money changes hands.
The executor also decides what happens in the meantime. Empty-property insurance is the first job. Household policies commonly restrict or withdraw cover once a property has been unoccupied for a set period, but there is no industry standard period and neither the Association of British Insurers nor the Financial Conduct Authority publishes one, so the only reliable answer is the one in the policy. Read it, and tell the insurer early rather than late. Then the mortgage lender, the council for council tax, and the utilities all need telling. Our page on selling a parent's house covers the sale of the house in more detail.
| Executor | Administrator | |
|---|---|---|
| Appointed by | The will | The probate registry, by the intestacy order of priority |
| Authority from | Death | The grant of letters of administration |
| Grant issued | Grant of probate | Letters of administration |
| Can contract to sell before the grant | Yes, but cannot complete | No |
| Who gets the estate | The beneficiaries in the will | The family, under the intestacy rules |
| Can decline the role | Yes, by renouncing before acting | Yes, by renouncing so that the next person entitled applies |
Is an executor personally liable for the estate's debts?
Not for the debts themselves, but for mistakes in dealing with them. An executor who hands out the estate without keeping enough back can be made to pay a missed creditor out of their own pocket, and the creditor can also pursue the beneficiaries who received the money. The protection is a notice to creditors in the London Gazette and, where the estate includes land, in a newspaper circulating in the district where the land is, under section 27 of the Trustee Act 1925. The executor fixes the time for claims in the notice and it cannot be less than two months. After it expires the executor is protected against personal liability to anyone whose claim they had no notice of, which is not the same as anyone who failed to answer the advertisement: a claim the executor already knew about from any source is not covered, and knowing about it does not wear off. Two things the notice does not do. It does not stop an unpaid creditor following the money into the hands of the people who received it. And it is no answer to a claim under the 1975 Act, where the protection is a different one: distributing more than six months after representation was first taken out (checked 20 September 2026). The other exposure is inheritance tax, which HMRC looks to the executor to pay from the estate before anything else goes out. Where tax is due the IHT400 return has to be in before the grant will issue.
None of this stops an ordinary person acting as executor. It does mean the job is done in order: assets and debts listed, tax dealt with, creditors advertised for, and only then the distribution.
Does an executor always need a grant of probate?
Only where an asset holder will not release the asset without one. Banks apply their own thresholds below which they pay out on a death certificate and an indemnity, and there is no published industry table of them, so the figure has to be asked for institution by institution. The one figure fixed by law is narrow: the Administration of Estates (Small Payments) Act 1965 allows certain bodies to pay out up to 5,000 pounds without a grant, a limit last raised in 1984. Banks may release more than that under their own policies, so it is worth asking before assuming a grant is needed. A house in the deceased's sole name needs the grant, because HM Land Registry will not register a transfer or an assent by a personal representative without the original grant, or a conveyancer's certificate that they hold it (rule 162 of the Land Registration Rules 2003, checked 26 September 2026). A share held as tenants in common is different: the legal title stays with the surviving owner, who sells with a second trustee appointed, and no grant is lodged at HM Land Registry for that sale; the executor deals with the estate's share of the proceeds. An executor's own authority comes from the will and starts at the death, so it is the registration that is blocked rather than the sale itself; an administrator is in a different position, because their authority begins only when the grant issues. A share held as joint tenants passes to the survivor without any grant at all, on form DJP. The guide when is probate needed sets out the tests, and how long does probate take covers the waiting.