Everything we hold, in one place — arranged by the moment you are in, not by what any of it is called. Most of it is free, and none of it needs an account to read.
Someone has died — acute, then probate.
22 documents · 7 tools · 3 form groups
The BD8 form notifies DWP of a death. This guide explains your three options, who sends it, and who doesn't need to.
Grief is hard enough without the search.
The first task is not everything. It is the next thing.
The DWP does not chase you. The claim window closes. Eighteen months is the limit.
The first week needs sequence, not force.
Some tasks belong today. Others can wait.
Readiness is not pessimism. It is care in advance.
Registration begins the record. It does not settle the estate.
Completion is not the goal. Readiness is.
Grief can wait. Some administration cannot.
A frozen account is not a wall. It is a process.
A named contact turns uncertainty into a route.
The correct order matters more than speed.
The funeral and the paperwork move on different clocks.
The grant is evidence others will accept.
Death certificate copies from the GRO — how many to order, what each institution needs, and what happens if you run short.
The thresholds are published. The household facts are yours.
A death certificate starts many conversations. It ends very few.
Administration becomes kinder when it has a route.
Accounts outlive their owners. Authority does not transfer automatically. Process is the route.
Tell Us Once tells government. Not everyone else.
The free explainer for Tell Us Once: what the service covers, what it doesn't, and which organisations still need telling directly — read before you make the call.
The notifications that stop payments, cancel documents and move a title — three of these are services now, not forms.
What the household can claim after a death, and the returns the estate itself has to file.
Claims a family member makes for themselves while caring for someone else — separate from a bereavement benefit or the estate's own paperwork.
A parent's capacity is slipping, or I'm the carer.
14 documents · 1 tool · 1 form group
Registered authority starts the work. It does not do the work.
Capacity is a legal test, not a medical verdict.
An attorney handles another person's money, not their own.
Capacity can change. The record should allow for that.
The care conversation is easier before the emergency.
Care costs need records before they need opinions.
Caring begins before the crisis gives it a name.
The parent who needs help may not be the one who asks.
Deputyship begins where planning was not completed.
A hospital admission asks quickly who may speak and who may decide.
An unregistered LPA exists. It cannot yet be used.
Authority written early is easier than authority asked for late.
Unknown gaps appear at the worst time.
A vulnerable dependant changes the whole file.
I want this handled before anything happens.
23 documents · 9 tools · 1 form group
Each administration year deserves a clean record.
A name starts the search. A route finishes it.
Probate value becomes the estate's tax language.
The law names a spouse. It does not name a partner. A will is the only bridge.
A variation belongs to a short window. Record the date.
The question your family will ask is: where?
Company-held rights do not pass as personal belongings.
Store the lawful route, not the secret itself.
A digital estate needs a map, not a memory.
The cloud keeps files. It does not keep authority.
What is missing should be visible before the moment that needs it.
The documents that matter are easy to gather and hard to find.
Order is a gift to the people who must continue.
A contact list without context is only a list.
The file is not complete until someone else can use it.
Continuity is not death planning. It is household memory.
A copy reassures. The original proves.
Pensions have their own succession record.
The record is yours to build. It is someone else's to use.
The record you keep today is the route someone opens later.
The hour with the solicitor is dear. Spend none of it searching.
Step-children are strangers under intestacy. A will rewrites that sentence entirely.
The person helping needs order more than volume.
Could someone run this house without me?
13 documents · 3 tools
The safe helps only if someone can lawfully open the route.
No paperwork improves during a hospital admission.
A welfare decision is not the same as a medical fact.
The strongest password can still block the people you trust.
Not everyone needs everything. Decide who knows what.
When one person stops, the bills continue.
An organised file is not morbid. It is practical.
Absence is not always death. Sometimes it is two days and a locked phone.
A new parent inherits a new administration.
A guardian named clearly is different from an assumption.
Care instructions matter even when the law is silent.
A care plan changes the documents that matter.
Name the person who acts before you need them to. The naming is half the work.
I've been named executor of someone else's estate.
26 documents · 5 tools · 6 form groups
The will gives instructions. The file gives the route.
Beneficiaries need accounts. Executors need receipts.
A calm list is a form of care.
Every asset needs a place. Every place needs a record.
Debts come before beneficiaries. The priority order is the law, not a choice.
A message kept today is one your voice can still send tomorrow.
Probate is a sequence, not a mystery.
A good paper trail protects a careful executor.
Receipts are not admin clutter. They are the estate speaking clearly.
A will can name the executor. It does not brief them.
An estate is not closed until its record is closed.
The first hour should not begin with a hunt.
The executor holds the route. The family holds the grief.
A family meeting is cheaper before the dispute exists.
Tax starts with values, not guesses.
Between spouses, the exemption is unlimited. The second death is where the planning lives.
A plain-English section guide to the IHT400 — what each box is asking for, where to find the information, and common errors that delay the grant.
Intestacy has edges that family language does not.
Survivorship is automatic. A share is not. The title register shows which applies.
The phone calls are easier when the list already exists.
A checklist for the PA1P probate application — what to include, what the Probate Registry checks, and the most common reasons for rejection or delay.
Months are normal. Silence is not.
Property locked in probate has a sequence. The sequence protects the sale.
Arrive with facts, not fragments.
Preparation does not shorten life. It shortens the search.
A trust changes the holder, not the need for clarity.
The grant itself, and the forms that sit around it when an executor cannot or will not act.
The IHT400 account and every schedule that attaches to it, plus the reference, the payment route and the corrections.
Moving what the deceased owned into the names of the people entitled to it.
The deceased's own tax return for their final part-year — separate from any tax the estate itself owes during administration.
Tax matters that sit outside the deceased's standard final return — non-residence, split-year treatment, and other filings that only come up in specific estates.
Companies House filings that keep a company compliant — including one that becomes urgent the moment an executor is running a deceased relative's business.
Every UK form an estate meets, walked through box by box — the official file, a dated source line, and what each question is really asking.
Every fee, threshold and rate we print, with the page it was read from and the date it was last checked. Free to read, and the reason our guides can be trusted on a number.
The institutional briefs and samples — the long-form documents behind the guidance.
The same estate, entered by what has actually happened rather than by what it is called.
Where you are now, in bands rather than a score, with the gaps named.
Real prepared documents, so you can see the standard before you buy anything.
Working notes on the law and the practice as they change.
The longer research the rest of the corpus draws on.
The standards body behind Valoren, and what it publishes.
The reference corpus — the definitions and instruments the standard is built from.
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