Find your ancestors in Index to Death Duty Registers 1796-1903

Discover your English and Welsh ancestors who left estates that incurred an inheritance tax.

What can these records tell me?

The Indexes to Death Duty Registers contains digitised images of the original indexes created by the Estate Duty Office (later to become the Inland Revenue) of all wills and administrations attracting Death Duties from all the Probate Courts in England and Wales.

The amount of information listed varies, but the Index to Death Duty Registers 1796-1903 records usually include a combination of the following information about your ancestor:

Biographical information

• Name of testator
• Address of testator
• Date of Death
• Name of administrator
• Address of administrator

Learn more about the Index to Death Duty Registers

These records contain the names of 3,377,363 individuals whose wills incurred an inheritance task.

Inheritance tax was first introduced in 1796 and by 1857 was applied to any estate with a value of over £20.

The original indexes are held by The National Archives, London, England, under the series title IR27 and are made available here under license.