As of 13 August 2026, AI can only partly sort out an estate when there is no will.

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 GOV.UK guidance on what to do when someone dies and dealing with an estate, and note which part of the UK governed the deceased person's affairs.
   2. Gather the death certificate, any marriage or civil partnership documents, details of children and relatives, and every document showing the deceased's property and family relationships.
   3. Make a single inventory of bank accounts, investments, pensions, insurance, property, vehicles, valuables, business interests, debts, bills and jointly owned assets, marking each item as confirmed or unknown.
   4. Paste the inventory and family information into the prompt, leaving out account numbers, passwords and unnecessary personal data, and ask the chatbot to produce the checklist and solicitor questions.
   5. Compare the chatbot's administrative steps with the current GOV.UK guidance, then contact each bank, pension provider, insurer and other asset holder to confirm ownership, balances and beneficiary nominations.
   6. Give the checklist, the document inventory and any disputed or unclear issue to a probate solicitor before applying for letters of administration or distributing assets.

   Prompt

   Help me organise the administration of an intestate estate in England and Wales. This is not professional advice. Do not decide disputed legal questions, guess facts, invent deadlines or state uncertain rules as facts. Use only the information I provide and clearly label anything that must be checked against current GOV.UK guidance or with a probate solicitor.
   
   Facts:
   - Date of death: [date]
   - Country and part of the UK where the person lived: [England and Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland]
   - Marital or civil partnership status: [details]
   - Children, including adopted or stepchildren: [details]
   - Other close relatives who may matter: [details]
   - Known property and other assets, with ownership details: [list]
   - Bank, savings, investments, pensions and insurance: [list]
   - Debts, bills and tax matters: [list]
   - Jointly owned assets and named beneficiaries: [details]
   - Documents already found: [list]
   - Any disagreement, missing relative, overseas asset, business, trust, property, vulnerable beneficiary or possible claim: [details]
   
   Produce:
   1. A plain-language summary of what is known and what is missing.
   2. A checklist of documents and information to gather, grouped by family, assets, debts, tax and property.
   3. A sequence of practical next steps, including which organisations to contact and which matters require an official process.
   4. A separate list of questions for a probate solicitor.
   5. A table with three columns: issue, what can be checked on GOV.UK, and why a solicitor may be needed.
   6. A list of statements you cannot safely confirm from these facts.
   Do not calculate who inherits or recommend distributing anything unless the relevant rule is confirmed from current official guidance. Do not include any personal data that I have not supplied.

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