Nobody asks the executor first
It is an administrative job that runs for months, and a surprising number of people find out they have it from a solicitor’s letter.
Being named an executor is often described as an honour. It is closer to an unpaid part time job that starts on the worst week of your year and runs for six months to a year.
What the job actually is
Gather what was owned, establish what was owed, pay it, and pass on the rest under the terms of the will. In practice that is certified copies, institution phone calls, valuations, tax, and a great deal of waiting.
The skills it needs are patience and organisation, not seniority in the family. The eldest child is a convention, not a qualification.
The two failures we see most
The first is a single named executor with no alternate. People move, decline, become unwell, or predecease. An appointment with no backup leaves an estate with nobody named, and the court appoints somebody instead.
The second is an executor who did not know. They are not obliged to accept, so the first they hear of it can also be the moment they decline, and the plan you made carefully is suddenly being administered by whoever petitions.
Ask them, and tell them where things are
The conversation takes five minutes. Say what the job involves, say you have named an alternate as well, and tell them where the signed original lives.
Then give them what they will need on day one: the location of the will, a list of accounts and policies, and access to whatever you have shared with them. This is what a vault is for.
Executor and trustee are not the same role
An executor administers an estate under a will. A successor trustee runs a trust and can usually act sooner, because the trust already holds the assets.
A plan with both should name both deliberately. They are often the same person, and they should be the same person on purpose rather than by omission.
Legacy Buddy provides document creation tools, not legal advice.
Knowing what to do is the hard part. This is the easy part.
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