As a beneficiary of a deceased’s estate, you will have to wait for the executor to do their job before you get the assets coming to you. While you need to exercise patience and realize this is effectively an unpaid role they are performing, there might come a point where you start to wonder if they are the right person for the job.
So what grounds might you have to seek their removal? Here are a few:
They are incompetent
Let’s say the executor keeps making mistakes which delays the distribution of assets. Or they struggle to remember what they have to do next. In that case, you might have grounds to ask a court to replace them. This sort of thing can happen when a person chooses a friend or family member of their own age to act as executor. By the time they come to fulfill the role, they have advanced in years and no longer retain the mental acuity the deceased chose them for.
They are incapable of cooperating with the other executor(s)
Sometimes a person elects more than one executor. This might be the case where an estate is particularly complex. If the executors cannot work with each other, it will be problematic for you as a beneficiary and you may need to seek the removal of at least one of them.
They are untrustworthy
The deceased may have trusted the executor but that does not mean you have to. People can often misjudge those close to them. Believing they are untrustworthy is unlikely to be enough. You will probably need to show evidence that they have committed a breach of trust concerning this particular estate.
Learning more about the process can help you decide whether you have grounds to seek an executor’s removal or not.
