As of 13 August 2026, AI can only partly work out how to pay the debts of an estate.

What to actually do

1. Hand it to a person

   The route this page recommends

   Someone with a licence or accountable authority has to sign this before it counts.

2. Use a tool built for this

   Second choice

3. Do it yourself

   The distant third

   A chat interface, chat-fluent skill, and roughly 1 hour until you can act on the result.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open the relevant probate and estate-debt guidance on GOV.UK, and note the pages that describe the process for your part of the UK.
   2. Gather the will, grant of probate or letters of administration, bank statements, loan and credit statements, utility bills, council tax correspondence, HMRC letters, funeral invoices and every letter from a creditor.
   3. Create a simple folder or spreadsheet with one row per debt, including the creditor, reference, claimed amount, evidence and whether the claim is disputed or uncertain.
   4. Remove unnecessary names, account numbers and addresses, then paste the redacted records and the prompt into a chatbot.
   5. Ask the chatbot to produce the debt table, missing-information list, investigation order and solicitor questions without inventing figures or legal rules.
   6. Compare every amount and creditor in the output with the original records, and check each stated process point against the GOV.UK pages you opened.
   7. Send balance and evidence requests to creditors using the drafted messages, keeping copies of replies and updating the table.
   8. Give the table, records and unresolved questions to a probate solicitor before paying disputed claims, distributing assets or dealing with an estate that may be insolvent.

   Prompt

   I am dealing with an estate in England or Wales as [executor or administrator]. Help me organise the debts and prepare questions for a solicitor, but do not give professional advice or make a final legal decision. Use only the information I provide and identify anything missing, uncertain, disputed or needing confirmation from an official source or solicitor.
   
   Estate information:
   - Probate or letters of administration status: [insert]
   - Whether the estate may be insolvent: [yes, no or unknown]
   - Known assets and available cash: [insert]
   - Beneficiaries and intended distributions: [insert, without unnecessary personal details]
   - Relevant dates and deadlines: [insert]
   
   For each debt or possible debt in the documents below, create a table with: creditor, reference, type of debt, amount claimed, amount confirmed, evidence, date due, whether it is disputed, whether it may have security or priority, action needed, and source document. Do not invent amounts, deadlines or legal rules.
   
   Then:
   1. Separate confirmed debts, possible debts and disputed claims.
   2. List the documents or information still needed.
   3. Explain the practical order in which I should investigate and pay items, clearly marking anything that depends on insolvency, secured property, tax, funeral expenses, family claims or a dispute.
   4. Draft short, neutral messages requesting balances and evidence from creditors.
   5. Draft a checklist of questions for a UK probate solicitor.
   6. Tell me which points I should check on GOV.UK and quote the exact page title or link if it is present in the material I provide.
   
   Do not tell me to distribute the estate or pay a disputed or uncertain claim without professional confirmation. Do not treat your answer as authority to make a payment. Here are the redacted documents and notes:
   [ paste documents or summaries here ]

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.