Help Centre
Find guides and answers to help you through estate administration
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Getting Started
New to estate administration? Start here to understand the basics and your responsibilities.
Legal Process
Understanding probate, confirmation, and grants of representation across the UK.
Inheritance Tax (IHT)
IHT rules, thresholds, exemptions, and form guidance for England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.
Assets & Valuation
How to identify, value, and manage different types of estate assets.
Debts & Liabilities
Understanding estate debts, payment priority, and settling liabilities.
Beneficiaries & Distribution
Managing beneficiaries, understanding wills, intestacy rules, and distributing the estate.
Tasks & Administration
Step-by-step guidance on essential estate administration tasks.
Jurisdiction-Specific Guides
Detailed guidance specific to England & Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.
Documents & Record Keeping
Guidance on storing, organising, and managing important estate documents.
Lifetime Gifts
Understanding the 7-year rule, gift exemptions, and recording gifts for IHT purposes.
Recent Articles
How to Value Assets During Estate Administration
This guide will walk you through what you need to value, how to go about it, and why getting it right matters. Take it one step at a time.
Keeping Accurate Estate Accounts
Learn how to maintain proper financial records throughout estate administration to protect yourself and satisfy beneficiaries.
Probate, Wills and Power of Attorney: What's the Difference?
An introduction to the differences between probate, wills and power of attorney, and what they mean after someone has died.
What Assets to Include in the Estate
One of the first questions many executors ask is: what actually counts as part of the estate? This article explains what is, and why.
Understanding Your Role as an Executor
Learn about your responsibilities, duties, and legal obligations as an executor or personal representative of an estate.
When Do I Need to Start Probate?
Discover what probate actually is, when you need to apply for it, and why getting the order of things right matters more than rushing to submit anything quickly
Video Tutorials
Setting up your Estate in EstateCopilot
Covers the first steps after registering with EstateCopilot to set up your estate. We walk you through a simple 8-step assessment to determine your first set of tasks and whether EstateCopilot is suitable for your estate.
Managing Tasks in EstateCopilot
A quick-start guide to using Tasks in EstateCopilot. See how to view the tasks created after your initial Estate Assessment, change the status of tasks and create new tasks to help manage your work. Each of the stages in EstateCopilot's workflow (First Steps, Discovery, Legal Process, Liquidation and Settlement) has it's own set of tasks. To view all tasks for the estate, use the All Tasks option from the Quick Access menu. The All Tasks page has filters to help you find tasks based on stage, priority and task completion status.
Managing Beneficiaries in EstateCopliot
A short guide to adding beneficiaries in EstateCopilot. Beneficiaries can be added with their name, relationship to the deceased and email address. A beneficiary can inherit a percentage amount from the residue of the estate, a fixed amount and/or specific gifts. The allocation can be selected and the amount entered. Add any specific gifts as appropriate. Once the beneficiary is added they can be invited to view their allocation in our Beneficiary Portal. This gives them access to a very high level summary of the status of the estate (e.g. Probate Application Submitted), an estimate of their financial allocation based on the assets and debts added to the system. There is no obligation to invite beneficiaries, however it can help them understand the status of the process and see resources that explain the process.
Storing Documents in EstateCopilot
Learn how to store the estate documents securely in EstateCopilot. Each estate has it's own secure area to store documents. You can upload the file, give it a friendly name and link it to the estate, or optionally one of the assets, debts or beneficiaries. This makes it easy to share documents securely with co-executors and ensures they're kept safe.
Managing Assets in EstateCopilot
EstateCopilot helps you track all the assets, the property, money and personal possessions, that a person owned when they died. They all need to be accounted for, as they form part of the estate and will need to be liquidated so that any debts can be paid and the remainder distributed to the beneficiaries. When adding Assets, select the category, give the asset a name and description to help you identify it, and give it a value. This value can be updated later if you get an updated valuation (e.g. updated valuation from estate agents for a property). EstateCopilot tracks jointly owned assets too, which pass to the surviving owners. Assets owned as Joint Tenants are handled differently from Tenants in Common, so it's important to know the ownership type by checking paperwork related to the asset. Once added, documents can be linked to the asset by clicking the edit button, or uploading documents to the document vault directly.
Still Need Help?
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