The complaints that recur
Executor disputes cluster around a short list of behaviours. Delay without explanation: years passing with no grant extracted or no distribution after it. Silence: beneficiaries unable to obtain a schedule of assets or any account of what has been collected and spent. Conflict of interest: the executor occupying estate land, buying estate assets, or favouring their own branch of the family. Neglect: property uninsured, farms drifting, debts accruing. Each has its remedy, and the choice of remedy, correspondence, citation, court application, should be proportionate to the behaviour and the value at stake.
Compelling progress and accounts
Before removal, escalation. A solicitor's letter setting out the beneficiary's entitlements and a deadline resolves a surprising share of cases, because many defaulting executors are overwhelmed rather than dishonest. Where a person entitled to a grant has simply not applied, the citation procedure can compel them to take the grant or step aside. After the executor's year, beneficiaries can press for distribution; at any point, a beneficiary can seek an order for accounts, and an administration suit, asking the court to supervise or take over the administration, remains the heavyweight remedy for estates in genuine disarray.
Removal and passing over
The court can act at both ends of the process. Before a grant issues, section 27(4) of the Succession Act 1965 allows the court, where special circumstances make it necessary or expedient, to pass over the person entitled and grant administration to someone else, a neutral solicitor administrator is the common solution in deadlocked or conflicted families. After a grant, the court can revoke it and remove a personal representative for serious cause: misconduct, incapacity, endangerment of the estate, or a conflict that cannot be managed. The threshold is genuine, courts do not remove executors for friction alone, and applications need evidence of real default or real risk, not merely of bad relations.
Defending executors
The executor's side of these disputes deserves equal weight. Administering an estate among quarrelling beneficiaries is difficult, unpaid work, and much criticised delay is in truth caused by registry timescales, missing title documents, or beneficiaries' own refusal to co-operate. The executor's protection is process: interim updates in writing, decisions documented, valuations independent, estate money never mingled, and professional advice taken at the points of exposure. An executor who can produce that record sees most complaints dissolve; this practice supplies both the record-keeping discipline and the defence when complaints come anyway.
Frequently asked questions
The executor has done nothing for two years. What can I do?
Options escalate from a formal demand, to citation procedures, to court applications for accounts, distribution or removal. The right step depends on whether a grant has issued and what the delay is actually caused by; advice at the outset prevents wasted applications.
Can an executor be removed?
Yes, for serious cause: the court can pass over a person entitled to a grant in special circumstances, and can revoke a grant and remove a personal representative for misconduct, incapacity or conduct endangering the estate. Friction alone is not enough.
Is the executor entitled to payment?
Executors are generally entitled to their expenses but not to payment for their time unless the will provides for it. Professional executors and solicitors administering estates charge under the terms disclosed at the outset.
To discuss a matter in confidence, contact Richard O'Shea at Mary Molloy Solicitors, 2 Rose Inn Street, Kilkenny. Arrange a consultation. This page is general information, not legal advice.
Further reading on this topic
- Defending an Executor: When Beneficiaries Turn on the Personal Representative
- Renouncing as Executor: When Saying No Is the Right Answer