What an executor actually needs before applying for probate

A solicitor once described the first meeting with a newly appointed executor like this: the person arrives with a folder, perhaps a shoebox, sometimes nothing at all. They know a will exists. They may not know where it is. They have not yet called the bank.

This is not unusual. It is, in fact, the norm. When someone dies, the people left behind are grieving. The administrative machinery of an estate does not pause for that, and the gap between what executors are expected to produce and what most families have ready is considerable.

The following is a plain account of what you will need before you can apply for a grant of probate in England and Wales, and why having it gathered in advance changes everything about the process.

The documents you will need at the outset

The first document is the original will. Not a copy, not a photograph taken on a phone: the original, wet-signed paper document. If it cannot be found, the estate may have to be administered as though no will exists, which triggers the intestacy rules and frequently produces outcomes the deceased would not have wanted. Knowing exactly where the original will is kept, and telling your executor, is one of the most practical gifts you can leave.

Alongside the will, you will need the death certificate. The General Register Office issues these through the registrar in the district where the death occurred. You should order several certified copies from the outset, because banks, insurers, pension providers, and HM Land Registry will each want one, and they will not return them.

To complete the probate application itself, including the inheritance tax forms submitted to HMRC, you must produce a comprehensive account of the estate's assets and liabilities at the date of death. This means:

• Bank and building society statements, for every account held, ideally showing the balance on the date of death
• Investment and share portfolio valuations, obtained from the relevant platforms or brokers
• Property valuations, usually a professional estate agent's written opinion or a formal RICS appraisal, for every property in which the deceased held an interest
• Title deeds or Land Registry records confirming ownership of property
• Pension paperwork, including statements from any defined benefit schemes and details of any defined contribution funds, because some pension assets pass outside the estate while others do not
• Life insurance policies, with the policy numbers and the name of the provider, along with any expression of wishes or trust documents attached to them
• Details of any outstanding liabilities: mortgages, loans, credit cards, and any professional fees already incurred

If the deceased held any jointly owned assets, whether a bank account or a property, you will need documentation of how the ownership was structured. Joint tenancy and tenancy in common produce very different outcomes at death, and the executor needs to understand which applied.

Why families rarely have this ready

Part of the difficulty is psychological. Assembling these documents requires confronting, in some detail, the scenario of one's own death. Most people defer it.

The other part is structural. A family's financial life accumulates over decades across multiple institutions, some of which change their names through mergers, some of which operate entirely online with no paper trail in the home. A pension from an employer twenty years ago may have been transferred twice since then. A property bought jointly before a marriage may have a title structure that neither party remembers clearly.

The result is that executors spend weeks, sometimes months, simply identifying what the estate contains. They write letters to banks. They search for old policies. They call pension administrators who cannot speak to them without a grant of probate, which they cannot obtain until they have the information the administrator holds. The circularity of this is a genuine frustration, and it delays distribution to beneficiaries.

HMRC imposes interest on unpaid inheritance tax from six months after the end of the month in which the person died. The administrative delays caused by disorganised records are not a reason to defer payment. The estate bears the cost either way.

The straightforward remedy is preparation. An organised record of assets, liabilities, account details, policy numbers, property information, and the location of the will, held somewhere the executor can find it without a search party, removes most of the delay at the worst possible time. It does not require unusual diligence. It requires doing the work once, then keeping it current.

Many families find it worth the time to sit down once a year, update the record, and confirm that whoever needs access to it knows where it is. The exercise takes less than an afternoon. The absence of it can cost an estate many months and considerable professional fees.

Glenvault is designed for precisely this: a private, structured place to hold your estate's document record so that when the moment comes, your executor has what they need. You can start organising at glenvault.com/signup.