Why executors are told to wait, and what that actually means (UK)
18 August 2026 · Inherit Vault
Every executor gets told the same thing: don't rush to hand the money out. It sounds like professional foot-dragging. It isn't. The waiting is the bit that protects the executor personally, and the executor is the one who pays if it goes wrong.
The executor's year, explained
Beneficiaries can't demand their money before twelve months have passed from the date of death. That's the executor's year, and it exists because valuing an estate, finding the debts and dealing with HMRC genuinely takes time. It doesn't mean everything must take a year, and interest can start running on unpaid legacies afterwards, so it isn't a licence to sit on things either.
What the wait is actually protecting against
Two things, mainly. Someone can bring a claim against the estate under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975, and the usual window is six months from the grant of probate. Pay everything out at month four and a successful claim lands on an empty estate, with the executor personally in the frame. Separately, unknown creditors can appear from nowhere. The fix there is a notice under section 27 of the Trustee Act 1925, placed in The Gazette and a local paper: wait the two months and one day and the executor is protected against debts they didn't know about.
Meanwhile, some clocks don't wait at all
Inheritance tax is due by the end of the sixth month after death, whether or not probate has been granted, and interest runs from that point at a rate pegged above the Bank of England base rate. There's also a queue at the other end: after submitting the IHT400 you have to wait twenty working days before applying for the grant. So the correct shape of the job is fast on tax and paperwork, slow on distribution. People usually manage it the other way round.
What a good executor does while waiting
Values everything properly, gets the house insured as unoccupied, opens an executor's bank account, chases the pension and life policies, closes accounts, and keeps a running set of estate accounts that beneficiaries can see. Interim payments are perfectly possible where an estate is obviously solvent and the six-month claim window has passed. Keep a sensible reserve back for the tail: a final tax bill, a utility account nobody knew about, the surprise catalogue debt.
Telling beneficiaries all of this early saves months of bad feeling. Most families think the delay means something has gone wrong. It usually means the person in charge is doing it properly.
Leave your family a map, not a mystery.
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