The executor's own affairs: the will-and-LPA referral moment

Consider the executor's position. Over the weeks and months of an estate administration, they are not reading about estate planning in the abstract. They are experiencing its consequences directly. They chase assets nobody catalogued, discover accounts the family never knew about, watch intestacy rules override what everyone knew the deceased intended, and sometimes learn that a lack of a lasting power of attorney turned the final years into a legal ordeal.

By the time the estate concludes, the executor understands the value of a clear will and registered LPAs better than any leaflet could teach them. They have lived it. This is, quite simply, the most educated and receptive audience for a will and LPA introduction that exists anywhere. They do not need to be persuaded that these documents matter — they need someone to make the next step easy while the lesson is still fresh.

Ask any executor mid-probate whether they intend to sort out their own will, and most will say yes, emphatically. Then the estate concludes, the family disperses, and the resolve to put their own affairs in order slides quietly into the backlog of life. A year later, nothing has been done. The most motivated moment they will ever have has passed unused.

And when an executor does eventually act alone, they walk into a will-writing market that, in England and Wales, is largely unregulated. Whoever advertises most confidently tends to win the instruction, regardless of the quality of the work. The professional who guided them through probate — the one person they already trust on this exact subject — is by then out of the picture.

An introduction at the right moment prevents both failures at once. It converts the executor's resolve into action while it is still strong, and it steers them toward vetted, regulated specialists rather than leaving them to gamble in an unregulated market. Doing nothing is not neutral here. It is a service left unfinished.

Executors are often at the life stage where their own planning is overdue and consequential. The common needs include:

• A valid, current will that reflects their actual family circumstances — second marriages, stepchildren, unmarried partners and children the intestacy rules would ignore.
• Lasting powers of attorney for both property and finances and for health and welfare, having just seen what their absence can cost.
• A review of an old will written decades ago and long overtaken by events.
• Guidance on guardianship and trusts where there are young children or vulnerable dependants.

You do not draft any of this or advise on its contents. Your role is to recognise the need and connect the executor with a vetted will and estate specialist who does this properly. The recognition is the valuable part; the executor will rarely raise it unprompted, even though they know they should.

The concern is understandable: these are people in the middle of a bereavement, and nothing should feel like selling across a probate desk. The answer is to make it an offer left entirely in their hands, not a push made under pressure.

SmartPeer's process is designed for precisely this. The executor opts in online, in their own time, never while signing other paperwork or under strain in a meeting. Every referral is consent-based and evidenced, an automatic disclosure letter explains the arrangement plainly, and SmartPeer never contacts your client except through the referral they chose. Your part is only to mention, at a natural moment, that help with wills and LPAs is available through people you trust — and then to step back and let them decide.

Most practitioners find this framing sits easily alongside their obligations, because it plainly serves the client. You are not manufacturing a need; you are meeting one the executor has just watched materialise in front of them.

The executor's own planning need is not an occasional event. It appears on nearly every file you handle, attached to someone who trusts you and who has just been given the most compelling reason of their life to act. Letting that moment pass, file after file, is a steady loss — to the family, who go unprotected, and to your practice.

As an introducer, never an adviser, you connect the executor with a vetted specialist and share in the introducer fee when the referral proceeds. SmartPeer members keep 60 to 70 per cent of that fee, membership is free, and there are no monthly costs. More than the income, a structured referral completes the service you were already providing and protects the next generation from the same intestacy problems you spend your working life untangling. It is free to explore, and joining takes minutes.