Being named executor is usually received as an honour and discovered to be a job — one with a fiduciary standard, a public benchmark, and personal liability for getting it wrong. This page is the honest job description: for the person just appointed, and equally for the beneficiary wondering whether theirs is doing it.
The Job, In Order
Decide early — renunciation is clean before intermeddling, not after; secure immediately — property, insurance and valuables need protecting from death, not from the grant; assemble the picture and complete the Revenue SA.2 (tax substance belongs with the estate’s accountant — the executor’s job is ensuring it happens, not advising on it); extract the grant — right first time, in a system where rejection costs your queue place; gather in and realise; discharge debts in proper order; then account and distribute, inside the executor’s-year benchmark where the estate allows — and with explanation where it doesn’t, because the difference between the slow estate and the actionable one is communication.
The Liability, Plainly
Devastavit: personal liability for loss caused by maladministration — the uninsured house that burned, the friendly-undervalue sale, the wrong-order payments, and above all premature distribution: paying out before debts, Revenue matters and claim windows resolve (the section 117 six months among them) leaves the executor personally funding whatever surfaces after. The protections are unglamorous and total: the contemporaneous file — decisions recorded with reasons, independent valuations for anything contentious, accounts from day one, even-handedness visible rather than asserted, advice taken and documented. Hostile beneficiaries lose against clean records and win against vacuums; the file was always the armour.
Overwhelmed Is Fixable; Silent Isn’t
Most executor disasters begin as overwhelm that chose silence: the role is genuinely demanding, families at war make it worse, and the law’s machinery — the beneficiary’s ladder, ultimately removal — treats sustained silence as its evidence. The exits all run through engagement: professional support (a solicitor administering under your instruction transforms the overwhelmed file — it is this practice’s core service), structured handover where conflict has made the position untenable, and communication meanwhile. Executors who take help early end up thanked; executors who go quiet end up cited — the choice between them is usually made in the first six months.
Just Appointed - or Already Underwater?
One call scopes the estate, the timeline and the traps - and an administration run properly is the executor's best protection as well as the family's.
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About the Author
Richard O’Shea, Solicitor, TEP practises with Mary Molloy Solicitors (established 1981) in probate, will disputes and estate litigation throughout Ireland. Richard is a qualified Trust and Estate Practitioner (STEP) — the international specialist credential for wills, trusts and estates — and holds a Diploma in Mediation from the Law Society of Ireland, a pairing built for exactly this work: specialist estates expertise, and the means to keep families out of war where that is still possible. Contact Richard on 01 5827148 or richardoshea@marymolloysolicitors.com.
This article is for general information only and does not constitute legal advice. Every estate and family situation is different, and time limits in this area are strictly applied - obtain advice on your own circumstances before acting or deciding not to act. We do not advise on tax; taxation questions should be directed to your accountant and Revenue’s published guidance. In contentious business, a solicitor may not calculate fees or other charges as a percentage or proportion of any award or settlement.