When we are named as Executor and Estate Trustee, we consider it a responsibility meriting standards of the highest degree.
We also assist Executors and Estate Trustees in carrying out their responsibilities.
When we act as Executor and Estate Trustee, and when we assist Executors and Estate Trustees, tasks we perform include the following:
- Applying for Probate
- Notifying family members and friends of a death
- Informing beneficiaries of the estate administration process
- Emptying household contents and decluttering
- Distributing household contents to beneficiaries
- Disposing of and/or donating household contents in keeping with the Will and applicable laws
- Cancelling driver’s licences, provincial identification cards, health cards, passports, and Social Insurance Numbers
- Cancelling social benefit payments
- Cancelling private pension payments
- Returning pension and social benefit overpayments made after death
- Notifications of death to:
- Governments
- Banks
- Creditors
- Collecting and distributing life insurance proceeds and employee death benefits
- Retaining an estate accountant
- Closing bank accounts
- Liquidating assets
- Investing prudently
- Meeting regularly with a financial planner and accountant
- Paying bills prior to receiving Probate, including for your funeral
- Overseeing your funeral in consultation with your family members
- Making an inventory of safety deposit box contents and personal possessions
- Getting appraisals for household contents
- Getting real estate appraisals
- Ongoing communications with beneficiaries
- Managing beneficiary expectations
- Mediating beneficiary disputes, subject to legal requirements
- Hiring professionals such as:
- Financial planners
- Accountants
- Lawyers
- Movers
- Searching for missing beneficiaries
- Administering trusts for minors and incapable beneficiaries
- Administering lifetime trusts, or trusts with staged distributions
- File taxes
- Making distributions to your beneficiaries
- Ensuring beneficiaries are offered independent legal advice
- Preparing estate accounting
- Preparing agreements between beneficiaries and the executor
- Making charitable donations in the Will
- Receiving charitable tax credits
- Inviting beneficiaries to sign releases and approvals of the estate accounting
- Preparing a Passing of Accounts to receive judicial approval of the estate accounting, as required
