Executor Personal Liability: What Professional Indemnity Insurance Doesn’t Cover
Most firms reassure their executor clients that they are protected. Fewer stop to ask which insurance is doing the protecting — and that gap in assumption is where executor personal liability quietly builds. A solicitor’s professional indemnity (PI) insurance is the firm’s own safety net; it was never designed to answer a claim brought against the estate. When a beneficiary challenges the will or a dependant brings a claim, it is the executor who is named — personally — and PI insurance does not respond.
This article sets out exactly where PI cover stops, why the executor is left personally exposed, and what closes the gap.
Two insurances, constantly confused
The confusion is understandable, because both policies sit near the same transaction. But they protect different people against different things.
- Professional indemnity insurance protects the firm against its own errors — a mistake in the probate application, a tax miscalculation, a creditor the firm failed to identify.
- Executor liability insurance protects the executor against third-party claims brought against the estate.
These two covers do not overlap. A challenge to the validity of a will is not a firm error, so nothing in a PI policy is engaged by it. The distinction matters most at the exact moment a client most needs reassurance — when a claim lands.
The claims PI insurance leaves wide open
An executor liability policy exists to meet a specific set of claims — the ones that fall outside PI cover because they are directed at the executor, not the firm. In broad terms, a policy covers the legal costs of defending the following claims against the estate:
- A challenge to the validity of the will — and critically, this carries no limitation period. It can be brought at any time, including long after administration.
- A financial provision claim under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975 — generally within six months of the Grant of Probate.
- A charity claim after distribution, or a challenge to a charitable legacy by someone not named in the will.
- A proprietary estoppel claim.
- A constructive trust claim.
The unifying point — and the one to make plainly to clients — is that every one of these claims targets the executor personally. PI insurance is silent on all of them, because none of them arises from the firm’s work.
Why executor personal liability outlives the estate
There is a natural instinct to assume that risk ends once the estate is distributed. The opposite is often true: an executor’s exposure is frequently highest after assets have been paid out. A will validity challenge has no limitation period, and an executor who distributes early remains personally on the hook if a valid claim later emerges — with the estate’s assets already gone.
This is not a fringe scenario, and the trend is moving the wrong way. A record 1,217 disputed probate cases were filed at the High Court in England and Wales in 2025 — a 12.7% rise on the previous year, and up almost 49% on 2020. Applications to enter a caveat, the formal step used to pause a grant while concerns are investigated, have topped 11,300 for two years running, a rise of around 56% over five years. Claims under the Inheritance Act 1975 alone are reported to have risen by 61% between 2020/21 and 2024/25.
For a private client team, this is not abstract. It is a measurable increase in the day-to-day risk attached to every estate the firm administers — and every executor it advises.
What actually closes the gap
Executor liability insurance is the instrument built for precisely this exposure. Described by function rather than sales pitch, it covers the legal costs of defending the claims set out above — the ones PI cover leaves open. A few features matter to a professional audience in particular:
- It applies during administration and, in certain circumstances, after distribution — the window when executor exposure is often at its greatest.
- It is a Before the Event product. Cover must be in place before any claim is threatened or notified; it cannot be arranged retrospectively once a dispute is on the horizon.
- It can only be placed through a solicitor or qualified legal professional — a lay executor cannot arrange it directly.
That final point is the whole reason this article is written for the firm rather than the client. Executor liability cover is a product the firm arranges — which makes it both a genuine protection for the client and a service the firm is uniquely placed to offer.
When and how a firm puts it in place
The practical guidance is straightforward:
- Timing: as early as possible — before the estate is distributed, and always before any claim is notified or threatened.
- Who it covers: the executor or administrator named in the Grant, whether a professional executor or a family member acting personally.
- A client cash-flow benefit: payment can, in certain cases, be deferred for up to six months — useful for clients managing a lengthy administration.
Advising executors?
If your firm advises executors, talk to Prosperity Insurance about putting executor liability cover in place before a claim arises — the point at which it can still be arranged.
