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What does an executor actually do? Roles, responsibilities, and how to choose one

Published 17 September 2026 · 7 min read

Naming an executor can feel like the easiest box to tick on a Will. In practice, it’s one of the most consequential decisions in the whole document. Your executor is the person legally responsible for winding up everything you leave behind: your money, your property, your debts, and making sure what’s left reaches the people you’ve named. It’s unpaid, it takes months, and it lands on someone at the worst possible time to be handed a large administrative job.

This guide covers what the role actually involves, who can take it on, how to choose well, and what to do if there’s genuinely no one suitable to ask, including the option of appointing Willow as a professional executor.

What is an executor?

An executor is the person (or people) named in a Will to administer the estate of someone who has died. Legally, they become your “personal representative,” which gives them the authority to deal with your assets, but also the responsibility to do it properly, honestly, and in line with what your Will says. It’s a position of trust, not just a title, and it carries real legal accountability if it’s done badly.

What does an executor actually do?

Stripped down to the practical steps, the job usually looks like this:

• Register the death and locate the Will, so everyone knows who’s been appointed and what it says.
• Notify banks, pension providers, and other institutions, and obtain the death certificate copies needed to deal with them.
• Value the estate: everything owned (property, savings, investments, possessions) and everything owed (mortgages, loans, credit cards).
• Apply for the Grant of Probate, the legal document that confirms the executor’s authority to act. Without it, most banks and the Land Registry won’t release funds or transfer property.
• Report to HMRC and pay any Inheritance Tax due, which in some cases has to happen before the Grant of Probate is even issued.
• Settle debts and liabilities from the estate before anything is distributed.
• Collect in assets: closing accounts, selling or transferring property, cashing in investments.
• Distribute the estate to the beneficiaries named in the Will.
• Keep clear records of everything done, since executors can be held personally accountable by beneficiaries if the estate is mismanaged.

None of this is necessarily difficult on any single step, but it’s a lot of steps, most of them unfamiliar, often while grieving.

How long does it take, and how much work is it really?

Timelines vary a great deal depending on the estate, and processing times at the Probate Registry have shifted around in recent years, so treat any single figure as a rough guide rather than a promise. As a general rule, a straightforward estate tends to take somewhere in the range of 6 months to a year from death to final distribution, and it can run considerably longer where there’s a property to sell, Inheritance Tax to account for, assets abroad, or any disagreement among beneficiaries. It’s rarely a single afternoon’s task; it’s a role that sits in the background of someone’s life for months, with periodic bursts of paperwork.

Executor vs Trustee: what's the difference?

These two roles get confused constantly, and the distinction matters more than it used to as trust-based Wills become more common. An executor administers your estate and carries out your Will’s instructions. A Trustee holds and manages assets placed in a trust, sometimes for a fixed period, sometimes with ongoing discretion over how and when they’re distributed. Many Wills only ever need an executor. Others, including Willow’s Islamic Will pathway, place the residuary estate into a discretionary trust, which means the same people are often appointed as both executors and trustees, taking on the second role once the first is complete.

Can an executor also be a beneficiary?

Yes, and it’s extremely common. A spouse or adult child is very often both the main beneficiary and the executor. There’s no conflict of interest in law simply from holding both roles at once, provided the executor still carries out their duties properly rather than favouring themselves unfairly.

Who can be an executor?

To act as an executor in England and Wales, someone generally needs to be:

• 18 or over
• Mentally capable of understanding and carrying out the role

Beyond that, it can be a family member, a friend, a professional (a solicitor, a bank, or a specialist executor service), or a mix of both. You can name more than one executor to act jointly, which is common for larger or more complex estates, though it also means they generally need to agree and act together on key decisions, which can slow things down if they don’t get on.

How to choose the right executor

A few things are worth weighing up when you decide who to name:

• Willingness and reliability matter more than closeness. The person who loves you most isn’t automatically the person best placed to spend 6 months on paperwork.
• Organisation and follow-through count for a lot; this is an admin-heavy role.
• Likely availability when the time comes. Very elderly parents, for instance, may not be well placed to take this on decades from now.
• A backup executor is worth naming in case your first choice has died, moved abroad, or simply isn’t able to act when the time comes. We cover this in our guide to substitute Executors.
• Multiple executors share the workload and provide a check on each other, but can create friction if they disagree, so choose people who’d actually work well together.

What if you don't have anyone able to act?

This is a genuine, common situation, not a niche one: no close family, relatives who are elderly or overseas, or simply no one you’d feel comfortable asking to take on months of unpaid administrative responsibility. Professional executors exist for exactly this. Solicitors, banks, and specialist executor services can all be appointed instead of, or alongside, a personal executor, and they charge for it, typically as a percentage of the estate’s value, since it’s genuinely substantial work carried out professionally.

Willow Wills can act as your professional executor if, when the time comes, you don’t have anyone else able to act. This is available subject to our charging terms, with a standard fee of 1.5% of the gross value of the estate if we’re actually called upon to act, a rate broadly in line with, or below, typical solicitor and bank fees for this work. There’s no cost at all if your named personal executors are able to act when the time comes; this is specifically a safety net for when they can’t.

Common questions about executors

Setting this up with Willow

When you write your Will with Willow, you’ll be asked to name your executor, or executors, as part of the process. If you don’t have anyone suitable, or want a safety net in case your first choice isn’t able to act, you can appoint Willow Wills as a professional executor at that point.

This guide sets out general information about the role of an executor in England and Wales. It is not legal advice, and Willow’s professional executor service is subject to separate charging terms.