Nine reas­ons being an executor of a will can be a thank­less job

For most people, find­ing out they’ve been appoin­ted as executor of a loved one’s will is an hon­our. The deceased prob­ably chose you because you’re respons­ible, reli­able, fair-minded and good with money and paper­work.

You may indeed be the ideal can­did­ate to ensure the deceased’s money, prop­erty and prized pos­ses­sions are dis­trib­uted prop­erly to their bene­fi­ciar­ies.

But too few execut­ors real­ise that set­tling the affairs for someone after their death is an all con­sum­ing and thank­less job.

You’ll spend most of your spare time bat­tling a maze of bur­eau­cracy, pay­ing taxes, house­hold bills and loans for the deceased, mind­ing their empty house and poten­tially deal­ing with inher­it­ance dis­putes – all at a time when you’re griev­ing. And if you’re not a bene­fi­ciary of the estate, you won’t even be fin­an­cially rewar­ded for your effort. Indeed, your own fin­ances and familial rela­tion­ships could come under strain.

Niamh Moran, a part­ner at Car­mody Moran Soli­cit­ors who has acted as an executor for fam­ily mem­bers and cli­ents, says: “People can be naive and not real­ise the extent of what’s involved. It really is an oner­ous under­tak­ing. You’re ask­ing people to ded­ic­ate at least a year or two of their lives to this.”

WHAT DOES AN EXECUTOR DO?

They wind up someone’s fin­an­cial affairs, carry out the will’s instruc­tions and admin­is­ter their estate. They must gather the deceased’s assets, pay off their debts, taxes and expenses, sell the fam­ily home and other assets if required, and ensure the will’s bene­fi­ciar­ies receive their inher­it­ance.

To obtain the legal author­ity to admin­is­ter the deceased’s estate, an executor must first take out pro­bate (unless the estate is small or all assets were jointly held with a sur­viv­ing spouse).

The will only takes effect after the Dub­lin Pro­bate Office or a local

Pro­bate Registry Office cer­ti­fies that it is valid and that all legal, fin­an­cial and tax mat­ters are in order.

But on top of the emo­tional tur­moil that comes with the after­math of a loved one’s death, here are nine prac­tical hurdles an executor can face dur­ing the pro­cess.

1 FINDING THE WILL

If the deceased didn’t tell you before they died where their will is, you’ll have to go on a hunt for it. If you don’t find it in their home, you’ll need to find out which firm of soli­cit­ors holds the will because Ire­land is one of the few European coun­tries that doesn’t have a national will register, says Jac­quelyn Dunne from Dunne Soli­cit­ors.

“That’s a prob­lem I’m cur­rently deal­ing with,” says Dunne, who also cre­ated The Jour­ney, a folder that helps people col­late vital inform­a­tion to leave for their executor.

“One cli­ent’s father-in-law passed away and had never men­tioned which soli­citor firm his will was with. All they knew was that he went into Cork City to make a will. But there must be hun­dreds o f soli­cit­ors in the city,” she says.

The executor must then com­pile the deceased’s assets, includ­ing bank accounts, prop­erty, pen­sions, insur­ance policies and invest­ments.

“You might find some bank state­ments and policy doc­u­ments rum­ma­ging through the house but the fear is you’ll miss something,” Dunne says. “You could end up get­ting a grant of pro­bate and five years later, someone finds a bank account that belongs to them and the executor still has to admin­is­ter it.”

2 THE FUNERAL

While the next of kin might arrange the funeral, it’s the executor’s duty to handle any prob­lems with the funeral and to ensure it’s been paid for.

If a deceased’s bank account has a small amount of cash, some banks will release it to an under­taker to pay for funeral expenses. But if the money is held in the deceased per­son’s name only, an executor will likely struggle to access it until pro­bate is gran­ted, which means funeral expenses could come out of their own pocket in the mean­time.

3 CLEARING OUT THE FAMILY HOME

If the will instruc­ted that the fam­ily home be sold and the pro­ceeds divided to the bene­fi­ciar­ies, the executor is respons­ible for pre­par­ing the prop­erty for sale to real­ise that asset, Moran says.

This typ­ic­ally involves get­ting a BER cer­ti­fic­ate, pay­ing for repairs, car­ry­ing out or pay­ing for a deep clean and paint­ing, and mow­ing the lawn. But the most chal­len­ging task is empty­ing the house of its con­tents.

Moran says: “I’ve had to do this myself and there’s a real emo­tional side to it.

“It can also be a source of fam­ily con­flict. There could be fights over items like jew­ellery, with one sib­ling say­ing, ‘Mummy always told me I could have her engage­ment ring’.”

4 INSURING AND MAINTAINING THE HOME

The executor must make sure the deceased’s vacant prop­erty is insured, prop­erly secured and main­tained. There’ll be con­di­tions attached to con­tinu­ing insur­ance of the home, such as check­ing the prop­erty reg­u­larly, pay­ing for heat­ing to ensure it doesn’t fall into dis­repair, and pay­ing for elec­tri­city for home secur­ity.

Moran says: “When I’ve been an executor and there was no one liv­ing in the house, I had to check it once a week and keep a record of that.”

5 TACKLING PROBATE DELAYS

Execut­ors must also battle with delays in pro­bate. They must apply for pro­bate in the area where the deceased lived at the time of their death.

The loc­a­tion where you apply for pro­bate influ­ences the length of time it takes to com­plete the pro­cess, says Joe Charles, pro­pos­i­tion dir­ector at insurer Royal Lon­don Ire­land.

While the national aver­age pro­bate pro­cessing time was 11 weeks last year, there are sig­ni­fic­ant dif­fer­ences in wait­ing times across each local dis­trict pro­bate office. The shortest wait­ing time, at an aver­age of four weeks, is at the Cavan dis­trict pro­bate office, which cov­ers Co Cavan and Co Long­ford, accord­ing to Royal Lon­don ana­lysis.

Need to apply to Clon­mel or Cas­tle­bar? That could take up to 20 weeks.

“Errors in pro­bate applic­a­tions or paper­work issues, such as oaths or affi­davits not being sworn cor­rectly, can also slow things down,” Charles says.

The Gov­ern­ment says a mod­ern­isa­tion of the pro­bate sys­tem is short­en­ing pro­bate pro­cessing times. This includes the rol­lout of an eProb­ate option that star­ted in 2023 and an online portal has just been launched nation­ally.

Dunne says the new online sys­tem is “dummy proof ” but is cur­rently only avail­able to soli­cit­ors, rather than an estate’s per­sonal rep­res­ent­at­ive.

6 REFEREEING DISPUTES

The old adage “where there’s a will, there’s a rel­at­ive” is true – the con­tents of a will can bring out the worst of human nature, from sib­ling rivalry to down­right hos­til­ity.

Wills can cre­ate lifelong fam­ily rifts and an executor could unwit­tingly find them­selves ref­er­ee­ing between war­ring sib­lings or other rel­at­ives over an inher­it­ance they believe they are entitled to or were prom­ised.

7 RISK OF LEGAL ACTION

If the will is con­tested, you could find your­self spend­ing time in court deal­ing with the mat­ter, which could prove daunt­ing.

In Ire­land, par­ents do not have to leave any­thing to their chil­dren in their will. This can leave a will open to a chal­lenge, on the basis that a par­ent failed in their “moral duty” to make proper fin­an­cial pro­vi­sion for their chil­dren in accord­ance with their means.

An executor “could find them­selves going to court, deal­ing with bar­ris­ters, hav­ing to make decisions, and being account­able to bene­fi­ciar­ies”, Moran says.

An executor is also leg­ally obliged to dis­trib­ute the assets as soon as pos­sible after the death. You are pro­tec­ted from any legal action against you for a year – a grace period known as the “executor’s year”. But if life has got­ten in the way and you’ve been drag­ging your heels, you could land your­self in trouble.

“Every­one’s very busy these days,” Dunne says. “It might be fine if the executor is also the bene­fi­ciary but if they’re not, they might not be motiv­ated, espe­cially if they’re work­ing six days a week and can’t find the time to get to a soli­citor. They could leave them­selves open to an action after a year.”

8 YOU’RE LIABLE FOR UNPAID LOANS OR DEBTS

An executor can be held per­son­ally liable if out­stand­ing taxes or loans are left unpaid.

They need to apply for “clear­ances” from the Health Ser­vice Exec­ut­ive, the Depart­ment of Social Pro­tec­tion, and Rev­enue. If, for example, the deceased was receiv­ing a state pen­sion, you must inform the depart­ment of their death to allow it to reclaim any pen­sion over­pay­ment.

If the deceased had been in a nurs­ing home, and had taken out a nurs­ing home loan through the Fair Deal Scheme, this must be repaid.

And a grow­ing num­ber of execut­ors are dis­cov­er­ing that their loved one had taken out a life­time loan – essen­tially a mort­gage loan secured against their home – and that it needs to be repaid from the estate, Moran says.

If you fail to ensure these debts are not repaid and dis­trib­ute the estate any­way, you could be made per­son­ally respons­ible for repay­ing these amounts.

9 IT’S EXPENSIVE

Not only can pro­bate take an emo­tional toll, but if you’re on a low to middle income, the duties carry of an executor the risk of tem­por­ary fin­an­cial hard­ship until the estate is settled. While an executor should not be left with a fin­an­cial loss, they’ll need plenty of spare cash to cover the costs of tak­ing care of the estate. They keep the receipts and then recoup expenses from the estate.

These costs, which could include legal and pro­bate fees, insur­ance, util­ity bills, prop­erty tax, prop­erty valu­ations, could amount to thou­sands of euro.

Moran says: “An executor’s duty is for life. If an unknown cred­itor to the estate emerged years later, the executor is respons­ible for that. And a com­plex estate may take years [to admin­is­ter]. If you want someone to give that the time it needs, you should allow pay­ment for it in a will.

“In the past, I’d have sug­ges­ted that someone would leave €5,000 [for an executor’s expenses] but things have become so com­plic­ated and infla­tion has risen so much that I’d sug­gest leav­ing €10,000.”

Source: Gabrielle Monaghan, Sunday Independent, 26th of July 2026.