The catch-22, named
The circle is real, not a misunderstanding. HM Courts & Tribunals will not issue the grant of probate until HMRC confirms the tax position — since 17 January 2024 that confirmation arrives as a unique code HMRC sends you after processing the IHT400, and the code only comes once payment (or a payment arrangement) is in place.
But every bank account in the sole name of the person who died froze on the day of death, and stays frozen until you produce… the grant.
Executors who don't know the routes below do desperate things at this fork — personal credit cards, bridging loans, or worst of all, logging into the deceased's online banking "because the money is right there." That last one is never the answer: it is unauthorised access under the Computer Misuse Act 1990 even with the family's blessing (the digital legacy guide covers why). The lawful route to exactly the same money is one form away.
Route 1: the Direct Payment Scheme — the designed exit
The Direct Payment Scheme exists precisely to break this loop: participating banks and building societies — and NS&I — will pay HMRC directly from the deceased's frozen accounts, before probate, at the executor's instruction. The account never unfreezes; the money simply travels from it to HMRC.
The mechanics executors get wrong, in order: form IHT423 goes to the bank, never to HMRC — sending it to HMRC quietly delays everything. You need one IHT423 per institution. The bank will pay only up to the balance held on the day it receives the form — a big bill may need several forms across several institutions.
And before any of this, you need an IHT reference number (form IHT422, or online) — apply at least three weeks before you intend to pay, because nothing can be matched to the estate without it.
Routes 3 and 4: own funds, and the last resort
Own funds, recovered from the estate. Executors and beneficiaries may simply pay the tax personally — or take a short executor's loan from a bank — and recover it from the estate once the grant releases the money.
Where family can do this without hardship it is often the fastest route of all, and the estate repays it as an administration expense. Keep the paper trail: who paid, how much, and that it was paid as a loan to the estate.
A grant on credit. Where the tax genuinely cannot be raised by any of the above, HMRC has discretion to allow probate before payment — a grant on credit.
It is rare, it must be evidenced (you have to show the routes above failed, not that they were inconvenient), and it should be treated as the fire escape, not the staircase.
The sequence that actually works
The trap is not any single step — it's that the clocks start in the wrong order if you follow instinct. The working order:
Week 1–2: apply for the IHT reference (IHT422 / online) — the three-week clock starts now, and everything else waits on it.
While that runs: assemble the IHT400 and schedules; work out the split between instalment-qualifying and everything else; if using the DPS, get an IHT423 ready per institution.
Pay — DPS instruction to the banks, or own-funds transfer, referencing the IHT number.
Submit the IHT400, then wait — HMRC says allow 20 working days before chasing — for the letter with the unique code and estate values.
Apply for probate with the code. The tax is settled or arranged; the lock is off.
Run in this order, the six-month deadline is comfortable for most estates. Run in discovery order — probate form first, tax demand as a surprise — and the interest clock usually wins.
The sequence is the hard part. It can also be handed over.
Everything above still has to be done with your estate's numbers — which accounts, which forms, which split between instalment and immediate. Executor's First Hour (£179, one-off) assembles it once: the sequence for this estate, the letters ready to send, the figures in one working paper pack — prepared within 48 hours.
See what's in the pack →Where the boundary is reached, Valoren refers.
The four routes above are the lawful mechanics, and for many estates the sequence is enough. Where the estate itself is the problem — illiquid, past the deadline, or qualifying for instalments no one has claimed — there are two ways to have it handled, and we are straightforward about which one is ours.