Who Pays the Gas and Electric Between Death and Probate?

The bills that keep arriving at your father's empty house — the gas and electric, and the standing charges that tick over whether or not anyone is living there — are debts of his estate, and the estate is what pays them. You are not personally liable for them simply because you are the one opening the post, and neither is anyone else in the family, unless they have specifically put the account into their own name.

That is the clean legal answer. The practical answer is messier, because in the weeks between the death and the grant of probate there is usually no money available to pay anything with. The deceased's bank account is frozen, the direct debit that used to pay the energy supplier has stopped, and the bills come regardless. In that gap an executor or a close relative commonly pays out of their own pocket and reclaims the money from the estate later.

This guide separates what the estate genuinely owes from what it does not, shows you how to get the energy account into the estate's name without waiting for probate, and explains why disconnecting the supply is almost always the wrong move.

The short answer: the estate owes the bills

When someone dies, responsibility for their property does not vanish and it does not leap automatically to the next of kin. It sits with the estate — the pool of everything the person owned and owed — and is dealt with by the executor named in the will, or by the administrator where there is no will. Utility bills on the deceased's home are ordinary administration expenses: proper costs of holding and protecting the estate's property until it is sold or transferred.

Because they are estate expenses, they rank to be paid from estate money before anyone inherits anything. They are not your bills. If you are the executor you have a duty to see they are dealt with, but discharging that duty does not make the debt personally yours; it makes you the person responsible for paying it out of the estate's funds once those funds are available.

The bills that behave this way include mains gas and electricity, water and sewerage where they are charged, and the standing charge on each supply. The same principle covers the other running costs of an empty home, which is why this question sits alongside who actually pays the mortgage before probate and the council tax on the property — all part of our wider guide to probate, the estate and inheritance tax.

Standing charges versus usage: who really owes what

Here is the distinction that trips families up. A standing charge is the daily fee for being connected to the gas and electricity network. It accrues every single day whether the house is occupied, visited or completely empty, and there is no avoiding it short of disconnecting the supply altogether. Standing charges are unambiguously the estate's cost, because they flow from the estate owning a connected property.

Usage is different. If the house genuinely stands empty, usage is minimal and also plainly the estate's. But if a relative moves in for a while, stays over regularly to clear the house, or runs the heating for their own comfort while sorting things out, they are creating consumption that has nothing to do with administering the estate. Strictly, the estate remains liable to the supplier for the whole account — the meter does not record who pressed the switch — but among the family it is reasonable for someone who has effectively been living there to meet the extra they have run up.

The practical way to handle this is to take a meter reading on the date of death, and further readings whenever the circumstances change, so you can see what was used while the house was empty and what was used once someone started staying. That protects the estate and the beneficiaries both ways: nobody is subsidising a relative's occupation out of the residue everyone is due to share, and nobody is being wrongly accused of it either.

Getting the account into the estate's name without a grant

You do not need probate, or confirmation in Scotland, to sort out the energy account. This is one of the things that can be done straight away, and doing it early prevents a great deal of trouble. Every major supplier has a bereavement team, and dealing with exactly this is their job.

Contact the supplier, tell them your father has died, and give them a meter reading taken as close as possible to the date of death. They will close the account that was in his name and open a new one in the name of the executors or "the estate of" the deceased. That stops bills continuing to be addressed to someone who has died, gives you a clean figure for what was owed at the date of death — which the estate settles as a debt — and a separate running account for what accrues afterwards, which is an administration expense.

Do this before any relative starts staying at the property, not after. Getting the account and the readings straight at the outset is far easier than reconstructing months later who owed what. If the supply is on a prepayment meter, tell the supplier that too, because topping up and dealing with any credit or debt left on the meter are handled differently.

Should you have the supply cut off? Almost never

It can be tempting to disconnect everything to stop the bills. Resist it. An empty house still needs protecting, and the utilities are part of how you protect it.

Through the colder months an unheated property is exposed to burst pipes and frost damage, which can cost far more than a few months of standing charges ever would. Just as importantly, the insurance on an empty home usually comes with conditions attached. Many unoccupied-property policies require the heating to be kept to a minimum temperature over winter, or the water system to be drained down, and will decline a frost-damage claim if the condition was ignored. Cutting the power off can put you on the wrong side of the very cover the estate is relying on.

The better approach is to keep the supply on but keep the cost down. Take regular meter readings so bills are accurate rather than estimated, ask the supplier to move the account to its cheapest standard tariff, and switch off only what genuinely does not need to run. Check the buildings insurance for its unoccupancy conditions and comply with them to the letter, keeping the confirmation with the estate papers.

Paying before the grant, and getting the money back

The awkward reality is that the estate owes these bills but often cannot pay them yet. The moment the bank is told of the death, the deceased's sole account is frozen and the direct debit that paid the energy supplier stops with it. Nobody warns the supplier, so the bills simply keep coming.

In that gap, an executor or a relative commonly pays the utilities personally to keep things ticking over. If you do, keep every bill and every proof of payment together in one file from the very first one, because these are reimbursable administration expenses that come back to you from the estate once funds are released — usually after the grant, and after the banks free up money. It can be several months, so only fund what you can afford to be without for a while.

Two things are worth doing to ease the squeeze. First, ask the supplier whether it will hold the account or agree a short payment arrangement given the bereavement; many will. Second, before you distribute a penny to any beneficiary, protect yourself as executor by advertising for creditors — the two-month statutory notice many executors skip and later regret — so a late bill cannot leave you personally exposed after the estate has been shared out. The energy account sits alongside the estate's other debts here, including any tax HMRC says was owed for the year of the death, and all of them are settled from the estate before the beneficiaries.

This cashflow gap — bills due, but the money locked up until the grant — is precisely what a life policy written in trust is designed to bridge, because it can pay out on the death certificate alone rather than waiting for probate. If your own family has no such cushion behind them, you can get life insurance quotes and have an FCA-authorised broker set the cover against what your household would need.

When the house is sold, transferred or was being let

The utility accounts run until the property leaves the estate. When the house is sold or transferred to a beneficiary, take a final meter reading on the completion or handover date, give it to the supplier, and close the estate's account, settling the closing balance as part of the estate's costs.

Keep the running total in mind, because the costs of holding an empty house — utilities, insurance, council tax, maintenance — eat into what the beneficiaries receive, and occasionally into the tax position. If the property eventually sells for less than the value used for probate, that can matter, as we explain in a house sold for less than its probate value. And if your father was letting the property out rather than living in it, the utilities may be the tenant's responsibility rather than the estate's, which changes the picture and sits alongside the separate question of who collects the rent after a landlord dies, before probate.

Scotland and Northern Ireland

The energy side of this is the same across the UK. Suppliers operate nationally, all have bereavement teams, and none of the steps above change with the border. Where it differs is around water and around the document that proves your authority.

In Northern Ireland, households are not billed separately for domestic water and sewerage, so that is one bill you will not see at all; the position is set out on nidirect. In Scotland, water and sewerage charges are collected together with council tax by the local authority rather than by a separate water company, as explained on mygov.scot, so they are dealt with through the council rather than a standalone account. And when it comes to proving your authority to deal with the estate, England and Wales use a grant of probate, Scotland uses confirmation, and Northern Ireland issues its own grant — a supplier settling a larger balance may ask to see the relevant one.

Frequently asked questions

Who pays the utility bills on a house during probate?

The estate does. Standing charges and any usage continue to accrue against the property and are proper administration expenses. Until the grant releases funds, an executor or relative often pays personally and reclaims later, so keep the bills and the proof of payment together in one file from the start.

How do I put the energy account into the estate's name?

Contact the supplier's bereavement team with the death certificate and a meter reading taken on the date of death. They will close the old account and open one in the name of the executors or the estate. Do this before any relative starts staying at the property, so the readings and the balance are clean.

Should we have the supply disconnected?

Rarely. Heating a property through winter protects it against frost damage, and insurers often require a minimum temperature or a drained system in an unoccupied home. Take regular meter readings, move to a cheaper tariff where you can, and check the unoccupancy conditions on the buildings insurance before switching anything off.