Practical tools for executors

Why we built them

Executors and administrators are usually ordinary people doing an unfamiliar job once in their lives, under time pressure and often while grieving. Two questions come up before anything else: how much will clearing the property cost, and when in the probate process does clearance actually happen. The tools on this page answer both without requiring a phone call.

Everything here is free and ungated. There is no email capture, no sign-up and no follow-up sequence. You can use a tool, note the figures, print the page and close the tab, and we will never know you were here. That is deliberate: nobody settling an estate should have to trade contact details for a rough number.

The clearance cost estimator

The estimator asks a short set of questions about the property — size, how full it is, floor level and lift access, parking, whether there is a loft, garage, shed or cellar, and how much of the contents may need separating — and returns an indicative price range with the reasoning shown alongside it. Seeing which factors push the figure up or down is often more useful than the number itself, because it shows what you can influence.

The range is indicative, not a quotation. Volume is the single hardest thing to judge from a description, and access issues can change a day's work substantially. A written fixed price only comes after someone has seen the property, and that assessment is free.

The probate timeline planner

The timeline planner takes a date of death and lays out the stages most estates pass through: registering the death, valuing the estate, applying for the grant of probate, dealing with inheritance tax where it applies, clearing and selling or transferring property, and distributing to beneficiaries. Typical durations are shown for each stage, along with where clearance usually sits in the sequence.

It exists mainly to prevent two common mistakes: clearing a property before its contents have been valued for the estate, and leaving clearance so late that it delays a sale. The output is general information about how probate normally runs in England and Wales. It is not legal advice, and it cannot account for contested wills, missing beneficiaries, foreign assets or estates without a valid will.

How to use the results

Both tools produce figures you can take into an estate account, a family conversation or a call with a solicitor. Print or screenshot the output if you need a record. If the estimate looks about right and you would like a fixed written price, or the timeline throws up a question about when to book clearance, a phone call is the fastest way to resolve it.