Getting Paid Fairly as Executor Without a Family Fight

The situation

Diego's wife died after a period of declining health, leaving a will that named him sole executor — the person responsible for administering her estate, formally called an estate trustee once a court confirms the appointment. Their estate was modest but not simple: a paid-off matrimonial home, a chequing and savings account, a small investment portfolio, and some outstanding utility and credit card balances. Once the home was sold and the accounts collected, the estate was worth roughly $480,000.

Diego was in his late sixties and still worked part-time as an administrative assistant, a job he had kept partly for the routine it gave him after retirement plans changed. He and his late wife had two adult children, Mateo and Giulia, who under the will were to split the residue of the estate equally once debts, taxes, and expenses were paid. Mateo worked as a long-haul truck driver and was often away from Ottawa for weeks at a stretch, which made keeping him informed and involved a genuine logistical challenge from the start.

Diego came to Treadstone Law a few weeks after the funeral, once the immediate grief had settled into the practical reality that he now had to run an estate he had never handled before, alongside his own job and his own loss. He had never acted as an executor before and, beyond a vague sense that some kind of court paperwork was involved, had no real idea what the role would demand of him or how long it might take.

Both of his children had their own lives to fit the estate around. Giulia lived close enough to Ottawa to meet in person when needed, while Mateo's routes kept him on the highway for stretches of two or three weeks, checking messages from truck stops in between. Diego wanted to treat both of them as equal partners in the process rather than names waiting on a distribution date, but he also understood, once it was explained to him, that estate administration rarely moves as fast as beneficiaries hope, and he did not want the ordinary pace of the work mistaken for foot-dragging.

The concern

The legal mechanics of the administration were manageable with guidance: applying to the Superior Court for a certificate of appointment of estate trustee (the document, commonly called probate, that confirms an executor's authority to act), collecting the assets, paying the debts, listing and selling the home, and filing the estate's final income tax return. Diego handled all of it over about fourteen months, fitting estate paperwork around work shifts and his own adjustment to living alone. The home took longer to sell than he expected, the investment account required several rounds of paperwork before it could be closed, and the final distribution could not be made until a clearance process with the tax authorities was complete — none of it dramatic, but all of it slow, and all of it landing on one person's evenings and weekends.

His actual worry surfaced only near the end, once the numbers were in front of him. Ontario law recognizes that an executor is entitled to be paid for the time, responsibility, and skill the role demands — it is not meant to be unpaid labour layered on top of grief. But Diego had never tracked his hours, never kept a log of the dozens of phone calls, branch visits, and evenings spent reconciling statements, and had no idea what a reasonable figure even looked like. He was also acutely aware that any amount he paid himself came directly out of what Mateo and Giulia would otherwise receive, and he did not want his children to think he had helped himself to their inheritance while they were still grieving their mother. Mateo, in particular, had been asking by text from the road when the estate would finally be wound up, and Diego worried that raising a compensation claim now would read as him dragging things out for his own benefit.

The core problem was not whether Diego was entitled to compensation — he clearly was — but how to arrive at a defensible number and present it in a way both children could see was fair, before any resentment had a chance to take root. Waiting until distribution day to raise it for the first time would have been the worst possible timing.

What we did

1. Explained the legal basis for compensation plainly. Estate trustees in Ontario can be compensated for their work, with the customary benchmark tied to the size and complexity of the estate rather than a fixed hourly wage. We walked Diego through the factors courts and beneficiaries typically weigh — the value of the assets administered, the difficulty of the work, the time actually spent, and how skilfully it was handled — so he understood the number would need to be justified, not just asserted.
2. Rebuilt a time and activity record after the fact. Because Diego had not kept a running log, we worked backward through his emails, bank correspondence, the real estate file, and his own recollection to reconstruct a reasonably accurate picture of what the administration had actually involved: the probate application, the sale of the home, dealing with the investment account, and the tax filing. This record became the evidence behind the number, not just a round figure pulled from habit, and it also gave Diego something concrete to point to if either child asked what, specifically, the past fourteen months had involved.
3. Prepared a full estate accounting before touching distribution. We put together a clear statement of everything the estate received, everything it paid out, and the proposed compensation, set at a figure in line with the customary range Ontario estates use for a trustee's time and responsibility on an estate of this size — an amount that left the bulk of the roughly $480,000 estate intact for the two beneficiaries.
4. Sent the accounting to both children before anything was paid. Rather than distributing first and explaining later, we sent Giulia and Mateo the full accounting and the proposed compensation figure together, with a plain-language cover letter explaining what the number represented, how it was calculated, and why it fell where it did. Mateo received it electronically so being on the road wasn't a barrier to reviewing it properly, and both were given time to ask questions before being asked to sign anything.
5. Obtained signed releases instead of going to court. Once both beneficiaries confirmed they were satisfied, we prepared releases — documents in which each beneficiary formally approves the accounts and compensation and agrees not to challenge them later. Signed releases from all beneficiaries let an estate close without a formal court application to pass the accounts, which is otherwise the process used when beneficiaries and an executor cannot agree on what was done with the estate's money.

The outcome

Both Mateo and Giulia signed the releases within about three weeks of receiving the accounting. Neither raised an objection to the compensation figure, and Giulia told Diego directly that seeing the itemized record made clear how much work the past year had actually involved — work she admitted she had not fully appreciated from the outside. Diego received compensation of roughly $20,000, and the remaining estate — a little over $455,000 after debts, taxes, expenses, and compensation — was split evenly between the two children shortly after.

The estate closed without a single court appearance and without the family tension Diego had spent months quietly dreading. Because the accounting was transparent and delivered before any money moved, there was nothing left for either beneficiary to feel blindsided by, and no gap of silence for suspicion to fill. Diego later said the hardest part had never really been the paperwork — it was worrying that doing his job as executor properly would somehow look like taking advantage of his own children. Documenting the work and putting the numbers on the table first is what took that worry off the estate entirely, and let the family close this chapter together instead of across a negotiating table.

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