-
Executor Appointment: Privilege or Burden?
It continues to shock me year after year that family members choose to fight over who “gets” to be the executor of an estate under someone’s will. Being an executor is time consuming, it will often involve needing to front a substantial amount of money before being reimbursed by the estate, and it can cause family members to see them as “the bad guy.”
First and foremost, I need to clear up a huge misunderstanding about how much power the executor has over deciding who gets what from the decedent’s estate. Let me be clear: the executor’s job is to follow the instructions in the will explicitly. The executor’s job is to ensure that property is distributed to beneficiaries exactly as the will states. In the instances where the will is silent or vague about property distribution, laws and or the court will usually dictate how that property is distributed. The executor does NOT get to decide who gets what.
In my years of dealing with estates, it appears to me that family members try to prove their love for the deceased by having a contest to see who can get the most bent out of shape about the estate distribution. Certainly they don’t make a conscious decision to do this, but I’ve seen it happen time and time again. Even families who were cordial before a loved one’s death will fall apart under the stress of their grief. Unfortunately, the executor takes the brunt of this type of strife.
There is hope, though. The burden on the executor can be avoided or mitigated. By doing estate planning with a trust instead of a will, the executor doesn’t have to spend the time to physically appear in court and front the money to hire an attorney to pay them to probate the will. Additionally, if you do your estate planning with a trust, you do a vast majority of the paperwork and organization while you’re alive so that your executor has less administrative duties after you pass. Finally, working with an experienced estate planning attorney who has experience with fighting these types of battles will have expert advice on how to avoid them to begin with.