Who pays the legal and accounting costs of a formal passing of accounts in Ontario?

In most passing-of-accounts applications, the legal and accounting costs of preparing and presenting the accounts are treated as a proper expense of administering the estate, and are paid out of the estate itself rather than personally by the trustee. This reflects the fact that passing accounts is generally seen as something the trustee is doing on behalf of the estate, not a personal project.

That default can shift, though, depending on how the process unfolds. If a court finds the trustee acted improperly — mismanaged assets, hid information, or resisted accounting without good reason — the court can order the trustee to personally bear some or all of the costs rather than passing them on to the estate. Similarly, if a beneficiary's objection turns out to be unreasonable or made in bad faith, the court has discretion to order that beneficiary to pay costs, including the trustee's costs of responding.

Because outcomes depend heavily on how the specific dispute plays out, no one involved should assume costs will automatically land a particular way; the safest approach is for both trustees and beneficiaries to get advice early about how the specific accounting and any objections are likely to be viewed by a judge.