What is probate?
What is an Executor, and What are Their Responsibilities?
An Executor is the person named in a Will to manage and distribute the deceased’s estate after their death. Being named as Executor is a significant responsibility, but it does not require any legal qualifications. Thousands of Executors apply for Probate themselves every year.
What does an Executor do?
Register the death and secure assets
Take steps to secure any property or valuables, cancel ongoing payments, and begin notifying relevant organisations.
Locate and validate the Will
Find the original Will and submit it to the Probate Registry as part of the Probate application.
Value the estate
Contact every bank, investment provider, pension administrator, and insurer to gather date-of-death values. Have property professionally valued. Identify all debts.
Complete the IHT400, if needed
If the estate is not an excepted estate, the IHT400 must be sent to HMRC before applying for Probate. An estate can be non-excepted even when no Inheritance Tax is due. Most estates are excepted estates and need no Inheritance Tax forms at all. YouCanDoProbate works out whether the estate is excepted, and completes the IHT400 automatically from your answers where it is needed.
Apply for the Grant of Probate
Submit form PA1P to the Probate Registry with the original Will, death certificate, and £526 application fee.
Collect assets, pay debts, and distribute
Once the Grant is received, access accounts, sell or transfer property, pay all debts and taxes, and distribute the estate to Beneficiaries in accordance with the Will.
Do you have to act as Executor?
No. You can formally renounce the executorship before any application is made. If there are other named Executors, they can act instead. You can also reserve your power to join the application later without formally renouncing.
The easy and affordable way to apply for probate
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It is an excellent, easy to use site and refreshingly dispenses with having to use a solicitor and avoids their unnecessary high fees.
I tend to be someone who doesn’t like to be taken in by a service that charges money for a service you might be able to do yourself for free, but after reading the reviews and watching the video on it and not wanting to hand the process over to an expensive solicitor, I decided to take a chance and pay the money and try this service out. As a result, I would highly recommend it to anyone. It was very easy to use – the way the questions were presented to you and the layout of the screens was easy on the eye. There were short videos at each section to guide you through. If you ever need to ask a question you can book a call or send a message. We needed help on one issue and sent a message late at night. It was answered by 7am the next morning. Very impressive response. Depending on the way you answer certain questions it will trigger certain sections and you can’t proceed until you have completed that section meaning all the questions are answered in the right order. Progress can be saved at any point in case you need to go and find out more information on something. We had IHT to pay and also had two of the three executers resigning their roles and the process dealt with it all. You get all the forms you need generated as PDF’s which you then print and send. The process is saved until you have an IHT number. Two weeks later we got the number, put this into the next section and were then able to proceed (it won’t let you continue without the number). At the end, the process generates all the final forms you need for probate – then all you need to do is print them off (check them) and send them. We had probate complete, including IHT paid, within 5 to 6 weeks of starting the process. We believe it was so fast partly due to the professional looking printed forms (no handwriting to cause any issues for HMRC!) and has likely saved us a lot of money in solicitor fees…you don’t need them with this! Highly recommended.
I found the whole process quite simple, the forms were easy to complete and straight forward to fill in.
We decided to use you can do private after realising how much a solicitor would charge us The forms were easy step by step all information and questions we needed to ask were easily found. The online and telephone support was excellent we are still going through it as takes up to 16 weeks for it to be completed We were very impressed and so would our dad be if he thought it was saving us money
YCDP asked all the right questions, it was fairly easy to complete. I spent about 2 months preparing the application, getting valuations etc. Probate was approved in 3 weeks from posting the application.
I can’t rate YouCanDoProbate more highly. The estate I was dealing with was quite complicated and using a solicitor would have cost thousands. The team talked me through every step and made it easy and simple to complete probate. Any questions I had were answered straight away and I found it all incredibly straightforward and simple to use. This is worth every penny.
The set was easy to access and user friendly. It was good to be able to go in and out of the site to input data as it became available. The phone line was an additional help to guide me through.
Excellent service received from You Can Do Probate. The staff were very helpful and friendly.
I am so glad I found this online company. I was a bit sceptical at first but as the cost of using a solicitor was fairly considerable I decided to opt for this. I am glad I did. The Probate Platform was easy to use and on the odd occasion that I had a query the telephone support was great. I have just been informed by HMCTS that the application has been approved. I have no hesitation in recommending this company.
Simple to use the online tools and help to complete my application
Couldn’t fault these guys. Easy to navigate through the site and they were on hand to speak to when needed. No need to use a solicitor which made a refreshing change. A difficult time was made so much easier. Don’t use anyone else, these are the people to use when having to deal with probate.
Ease of use , consideration and understanding, knowledge of the system , made it as easy as possible
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