A Passing of Accounts That Uncovered a Brother's Hidden Estate Fees

The situation

Yasmin's father, Ramon, died in Cobourg leaving an estate worth roughly $1.15 million, made up mostly of a non-registered investment portfolio, a house, and a modest amount of cash. His will named Yasmin's brother, Mateo, as estate trustee — the person responsible for gathering the assets, paying debts and taxes, and eventually distributing what remained to Yasmin and Mateo equally. Mateo owned and operated several franchise locations of a national chain, and Ramon had trusted him to handle the practical side of settling the estate.

Yasmin, who worked as an investment advisor, was the more financially literate of the two, but she had deliberately stepped back to let Mateo manage things without her looking over his shoulder. For the first year after their father's death, that seemed to work. Mateo sent occasional updates, the house eventually sold, and Yasmin assumed the investment portfolio was being managed sensibly in the meantime.

When Mateo finally proposed a plan to distribute what remained, the numbers surprised her. The portfolio, which had been worth about $640,000 shortly after their father's death, was being distributed at a value closer to $520,000. Mateo's proposal also included a trustee compensation claim of $95,000 for his work administering the estate. Yasmin asked for the underlying records. What she received was incomplete, and what she could piece together did not sit right with someone who managed investment accounts for a living.

She raised the discrepancy with Mateo directly first, hoping there was a simple explanation — a fee she had forgotten about, a market downturn she had missed while focused on her own clients. Mateo's answers were vague, and when she pressed for the actual brokerage statements rather than his summary, he became defensive and slow to respond. Two months passed with no further documents. That delay, more than the numbers themselves, is what convinced Yasmin she needed independent help before signing off on the final distribution.

What a passing of accounts actually does

An estate trustee in Ontario has to account for everything that happens to the estate's money and property — every asset gathered, every expense paid, every investment decision made, and any compensation the trustee takes for the work. In most estates, the trustee simply shares an informal accounting with the beneficiaries, everyone agrees it looks reasonable, and the estate is distributed without any court involvement.

A passing of accounts is what happens when that informal step breaks down. It is a formal court process in which the estate trustee files detailed financial records with the Superior Court, and any beneficiary who has concerns can file objections and cross-examine the trustee on the numbers. The court then reviews the accounts line by line and decides whether they should be approved, adjusted, or rejected outright. It exists specifically for situations like Yasmin's: where trust between siblings has broken down enough that an outside party needs to check the math.

Trustee compensation is one of the things a passing of accounts scrutinizes closely. Ontario courts generally look at compensation in relation to the actual work involved — the complexity of the estate, the care and skill the trustee brought to managing it, the time spent, and the results achieved — rather than treating any fixed percentage as automatic. A trustee who did comparatively little active work, or who managed assets poorly, can have a compensation claim reduced well below what they proposed for themselves.

When our team reviewed the records Mateo had produced, two problems stood out. First, the portfolio's decline did not match the broader market over the same period; a large block of volatile technology holdings had been left in place through a sharp downturn instead of being rebalanced, well past the point a reasonably attentive trustee would have acted. Second, Mateo's $95,000 compensation claim was based on general oversight of the estate rather than any specific accounting of hours worked or particular skill applied, and it was proportionally high for an estate of this size and relative simplicity.

What we did

1. Requested the full estate records before filing anything. Before starting a court process, our team formally demanded the complete financial history of the estate — brokerage statements, correspondence with the investment firm, and records of every transaction — rather than relying on the summary Mateo had already provided. This gave us a factual foundation instead of arguing from suspicion.
2. Had an independent review of the investment decisions. We arranged for an outside financial analysis of the portfolio's handling during the administration period, comparing the actual holdings and their timing against reasonable benchmarks. This produced a clear, defensible figure for the loss attributable to delay rather than ordinary market movement, which came to approximately $70,000.
3. Filed a notice of objection to the proposed accounts. Rather than accepting Mateo's informal proposal, we required him to file a formal passing of accounts with the Superior Court, which put the full record under oath and subject to cross-examination, and we filed Yasmin's objections to both the compensation claim and the investment losses within the required time.
4. Negotiated from a position built on the evidence. With the independent analysis and a formal objection on file, we approached Mateo's lawyer to propose a settlement before the matter went to a contested hearing. Litigating a passing of accounts through to a full hearing is expensive and slow, often taking a year or more, and a negotiated resolution that reflected the strength of Yasmin's position served her better than fighting every point in court.
5. Structured the settlement as an adjustment to the final distribution. Rather than requiring Mateo to personally repay the estate in cash, which can be difficult to enforce, the settlement reduced his compensation claim and offset the investment shortfall directly against his share of the remaining distribution, so the correction happened automatically as the estate was wound up.

The outcome

The matter settled roughly seven months after Yasmin first raised concerns, without a contested hearing. Mateo's compensation claim was reduced from $95,000 to $38,000, reflecting the actual scope of work involved rather than a broad percentage of the estate. He also agreed to absorb the $70,000 in investment losses attributable to the delayed rebalancing, applied as a reduction against his own share of the estate rather than Yasmin's.

Between the two adjustments, roughly $127,000 that would otherwise have come out of Yasmin's inheritance stayed in the estate and was reflected in the final distribution. The house sale proceeds and remaining cash were distributed shortly after, closing out an estate that had been open for close to two years.

The financial outcome mattered, but so did the process. Because the passing of accounts forced full disclosure under oath, Yasmin came away with a complete and verified picture of exactly what had happened to their father's money, rather than a settlement reached on partial information. That certainty, as much as the dollar figure, was what she had been after from the start.

The relationship between the two siblings was strained through the process, which is one of the real costs of contesting a passing of accounts that a settlement figure does not capture. Yasmin was clear from the outset that she was not trying to punish her brother; she wanted the estate handled the way their father would have expected, with accurate records and fair compensation for genuine work. Framing the objection that way, and settling once the numbers were corrected rather than pushing for more, made it easier for both of them to move past the dispute once the estate finally closed.

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