Choosing an executor: the decision that matters most

Beneficiaries receive. Executors work. The average Canadian estate takes a year or more to settle, involves a few hundred hours of administration, and lands on your executor’s desk during the worst weeks of their life. Choose accordingly.

What you are actually asking of them

Locate the will and arrange the funeral. Secure the house, the car, the passwords. Apply for probate. Notify banks, pension plans, the CRA, Service Canada, insurers. Open an estate bank account. Pay debts. File your final tax return — and the estate’s. Obtain a clearance certificate from the CRA before distributing, or be personally liable for unpaid tax. Deal with beneficiaries who phone weekly. Keep accounts that a court could review. Then distribute, and close everything down.

The full job description is worth reading before you ask anyone.

The qualities that matter

Organised beats brilliant. The job is administration: forms, deadlines, folders, phone queues. Your most impressive friend is not necessarily your most organised one.

Available beats honoured. They will handle this alongside their own life, for a year or more. Someone drowning in their own obligations will let the estate drift.

Younger and local beats older and distant. They must plausibly outlive you with energy to spare. And an out-of-province executor faces real friction: Ontario, for instance, can require an executor who lives outside the province (unless in a reciprocating jurisdiction) to post a bond. An executor abroad can create tax residency questions for the estate itself. Prefer someone in your own province.

Willing. Ask them. Actually ask. Being surprised into an executorship is a gift nobody wants, and an appointed executor can renounce, which leaves your estate scrambling.

Common patterns, honestly assessed

Your spouse. The default and usually right — they know your affairs. Ensure your backup is strong, since your spouse may predecease you or be too unwell to act.

One adult child. Fine if the family will accept it. Pick for competence, and say why in a family conversation now, not in a letter read after the funeral.

Two children jointly. The peacekeeping instinct behind this (“I can’t choose between them”) creates a two-signature estate. If they get along, slower; if they do not, deadlocked. If you must appoint jointly, let them act independently or name a tie-breaker.

A trust company. For large, complex or conflict-ridden estates, a professional executor is worth their fee (typically a percentage of the estate). No one has to be burdened, no one can be accused of self-dealing, and nobody’s inheritance depends on their sibling’s filing habits.

What executors are paid

Executors are entitled to reasonable compensation from the estate — in Ontario the court-accepted convention works out to roughly 5% of estate value for a full administration, under the Trustee Act’s “fair and reasonable” standard. Family executors often waive it; that is their choice to make, not yours to assume. Executor compensation in detail.