If you were to ask someone what good estate planning looks like, I suspect most answers would focus on what happens to the assets. Is there a will in place, has inheritance tax been considered and is it clear who should receive what?

All of those questions are important, for sure, but I do wonder whether there is another one that receives far less recognition. When someone dies, is there actually enough accessible money to cover the costs that arise before the estate can be settled?

It may sound like a fairly small detail when set against the overall value of an estate. For the people left to deal with it, however, it can soon become one of the most pressing issues they face.

The first bill can arrive very quickly

Funeral costs are perhaps the clearest example of this. The average simple attended funeral now costs £3,828, according to SunLife’s 2026 Cost of Dying Report, rising to £5,140 once the wider send-off is included.¹

For a family dealing with a bereavement, that is a significant sum to find at short notice. What makes the situation particularly frustrating is that there may be more than enough money within the estate to cover it.

The problem is access. A person can leave behind a valuable property, savings and investments, but their executor may still be unable to use those assets to meet costs arising in the first few weeks.

Estate value only tells us part of the answer

On the whole, we are used to thinking about wealth in terms of assets and long-term planning. That makes complete sense while somebody is alive, but after death, access to that wealth can become just as important as its value.

After all, the figure attached to an estate tells us what may eventually be available to beneficiaries. It tells us far less about how an executor is going to meet a bill that needs paying today.

Nor does the financial pressure stop with the funeral. Properties may need to remain insured and maintained, professional fees can arise and debts may need settling while the administration process continues.

Of course, there are often perfectly realistic ways of meeting some of these expenses. Banks may agree to settle a funeral invoice directly from the deceased’s account, while life insurance or a pre-paid funeral plan may provide the money required.

The problem comes when those routes either do not exist or do not cover everything. At that point, the question is no longer how much someone has left behind, but how the executor pays the bills that cannot wait.

Executors should not automatically become the lender

That brings us to the expectations placed on executors themselves. There can be an assumption that somebody in the family will simply pay upfront and recover the money later.

For some, that may be possible and they may be perfectly comfortable doing so. But we should not assume an executor has several thousand pounds readily available, nor that they should have to borrow personally to meet expenses that belong to the estate.

This can become particularly difficult where property makes up a large proportion of the assets. A house may represent considerable wealth, but it cannot necessarily provide the cash required to pay an invoice next week.

A question advisers should be asking earlier

With that in mind, I think this is a question advisers need to be asking much earlier in the estate-planning process. A great deal of attention is given to what clients want to leave behind, but there should also be a discussion about how the costs of administering that estate will be met.

That does not mean every client needs a separate funding arrangement waiting in the background. Rather, it means understanding what sources of cash may be available and reducing the chance of executors having to work it all out for the first time while dealing with a bereavement.

At Untangled, we see estates where that funding gap has already emerged. Our Estate Loan can help executors cover inheritance tax, estate debts, legal fees, funeral costs and property liabilities where the assets needed to meet those expenses are not yet available.

There are no required monthly repayments, with the funding usually repaid directly from the estate once it is settled. For an executor facing bills that cannot be put on hold, that provides another route without relying on them to fund the estate personally.

Of course, borrowing needs careful consideration and will not suit every estate. The important point is that executors should know what routes are available before financial pressure begins to dictate the decisions they make.

Estate liquidity should be part of the plan

We spend a lot of time helping clients decide what should happen to their wealth after they die, and with good reason. What receives far less attention is how the period between death and distribution will actually be funded.

In my view, estate liquidity should become a standard part of estate-planning discussions. Planning what happens to someone’s wealth is only part of the job if no one has considered how the costs of administering it will be paid.

Becky Dixon is Growth Manager at Untangled

Source

¹ SunLife, Cost of Dying Report 2026: https://www.sunlife.co.uk/siteassets/documents/cost-of-dying/sunlife-cost-of-dying-report-2026.pdf

This article is provided for information purposes only and does not constitute legal or  financial advice.

Article source: This article was originally published by Today's Wills and Probate on 2nd October 2026 and is reproduced here with permission from Square 1 Media. It can be found here.