When an Executor's Own Math Didn't Hold Up in Court

The situation

The number on the order was lower than the one Sagal had already paid herself, and that was the problem in a single sentence. She had been her mother's executor for a little over two years by the time the estate finally reached a contested hearing, and for most of that time she had believed she was doing everything right. The order said otherwise, at least on one point, and it meant writing a cheque back into the estate for the difference.

Her mother had died with a modest but real estate: a house in New Liskeard, some investment accounts, and a small amount of jointly held property that took time to sort out. The estate was worth somewhere in the range of four hundred thousand dollars once everything was accounted for. Sagal was the only one of three siblings willing to take on the executor role, and she did it alongside her regular work as a security guard, evenings and weekends spent on paperwork she had never done before.

Her sister Halima, a veterinary technician, stayed largely out of the administration but kept a close eye on timelines and asked reasonable questions along the way. Their brother Tuan took a different position. About a year and a half into the administration, once the house had sold and the investment accounts had been collapsed into the estate, Tuan asked for a formal passing of accounts, the court process where an executor's handling of the estate is reviewed and approved, or challenged, line by line.

By the time that request landed, Sagal had already paid herself compensation for her work as executor. She had calculated the figure herself, using a percentage she had seen described online as the standard rate. It was not an unreasonable number on its face. It was also not how compensation actually gets set when someone objects, and Tuan objected.

Sagal had not gone looking for trouble. She had spent two years fielding calls from the bank, chasing down a title issue on the jointly held property, and coordinating with an appraiser and a real estate agent while working her regular shifts. Somewhere in the first year, tired and unsure whether she was even allowed to be paid for the time, she searched online for how executor compensation worked in Ontario, found a figure repeated across several sites, and applied it to the estate without asking anyone, including a lawyer, whether that was actually how it was supposed to be done.

What the other side was relying on

Tuan's position at the hearing was straightforward and, in places, fair. Executor compensation in Ontario is not a fixed percentage anyone can apply on their own. It is meant to reflect the actual work done, weighed against factors like the size and complexity of the estate, the results achieved, the time spent, and the skill and care shown in the administration. A percentage taken from a website, however commonly repeated, is a starting point for negotiation at best. It is not an entitlement, and it is certainly not a number an executor can simply pay themselves without either the beneficiaries' agreement or a court order behind it.

Tuan's lawyer built the case around three points. First, that Sagal had paid herself before the accounts were formally passed, without getting the other beneficiaries' written consent first, which put the burden on her to justify the figure after the fact rather than before. Second, that some of the record-keeping from the early months of the administration was thin. Sagal had kept receipts and made notes, but not in the structured accounting format the court expects, and there were a few gaps where it was not clear what a payment out of the estate had actually been for. Third, that the estate itself, while real work, was not especially complex. One property, a handful of accounts, no business interests, no litigation with outside parties. On that basis, Tuan argued the percentage Sagal had used was on the high side for what the job had actually required.

None of this was framed as an accusation of dishonesty, and it was not one. The argument was narrower than that: that the amount was too high for the work involved, and that paying herself before the figure was tested was the wrong order of operations. That distinction mattered a great deal for how the hearing, and the outcome, unfolded.

Tuan's lawyer also pointed to the small stretches of time where Sagal's notes did not clearly show what a particular withdrawal from the estate account had covered, arguing that any ambiguity in the record should be resolved against the executor rather than in her favour, since it was her responsibility to keep the accounting clear from the outset. It was a fair general principle, even where the actual amounts involved were modest and the gaps were more a matter of disorganization than concealment.

What we did

1. Reviewed the file for what could still be salvaged. Before deciding on a strategy we went through every record Sagal had kept, receipts, bank statements, her own handwritten notes, to see how much of a real accounting could be reconstructed even though it had not been kept in the usual format from the start. Most of it was there; it just needed organizing.
2. Rebuilt a proper estate accounting from the underlying records. We converted two years of scattered documentation into the structured statement of receipts and disbursements the court actually expects to see, separating capital transactions from revenue ones and matching every dollar in and out of the estate to a source document, the kind of categorization a normal chequebook register does not provide but the court's accounting format specifically requires.
3. Recalculated compensation against the real factors, not the online shortcut. That meant weighing the factors Ontario courts actually use for this exercise, the size of the estate, the care and responsibility involved, the time spent, the skill shown, and the results achieved, rather than defending the original percentage, and comparing that honestly against what Sagal had already taken. Running the honest number ourselves, before the hearing, meant we knew where the real gap was and could plan around it instead of being surprised by the court's figure.
4. Advised Sagal early that a reduction was likely and why fighting the full number was not the right move. Part of limiting the damage was telling her, before the hearing, that some of Tuan's underlying point was fair, that a contested hearing rewards credibility over stubbornness, and that pushing to keep the entire original figure risked a worse result, including possible cost consequences against her personally.
5. Prepared a hearing record that showed diligence rather than defensiveness. We framed the evidence around the work Sagal had actually done, the house sale she managed, the accounts she consolidated, the beneficiaries she kept informed, so the judge saw a conscientious executor who had made one procedural misstep, not someone who had helped herself to estate funds at the family's expense.
6. Negotiated the repayment terms once the reduced figure was set. Once the court set the lower compensation figure, we arranged for Sagal to repay the difference to the estate in installments that did not require her to liquidate anything personally or borrow against her home, and confirmed in writing with Tuan's lawyer that the repayment schedule closed the compensation issue entirely.
7. Closed the estate cleanly once the order was final. With the accounting approved and the compensation issue resolved, we finished the remaining administrative steps, final releases from each beneficiary, the last tax filing, and the distribution of what remained, so the estate could close without the passing-of-accounts dispute hanging over any part of it. Finishing these steps promptly also meant Sagal was not left administering a technically open estate for months after the hearing had already settled the only contested issue.
8. Talked Sagal through what to say, and not say, on the stand. Contested hearings can turn on tone as much as substance, and we prepared her to answer plainly about the online figure she had relied on, acknowledging the mistake in sequence without over-apologizing in a way that could read as an admission of something worse than what actually happened.

The outcome

The court reduced Sagal's compensation from the figure she had originally taken to a lower amount that more closely reflected the actual time and complexity involved, and she repaid the difference to the estate. That was a real loss, and we told her plainly beforehand that it was the likely outcome once the file was properly examined. The online percentage she had relied on turned out to be a rough guide, not a rule, and paying herself before anyone had tested it left her exposed in a way that could have been avoided with a different order of steps.

What the record kept her from losing was more significant than what she lost. The judge accepted, on the strength of the rebuilt accounting and the evidence of the actual work done, that Sagal had acted honestly and with reasonable care throughout the administration. There was no finding of misconduct, no order for her to personally cover legal costs beyond the ordinary course, and no suggestion she should be removed or replaced as executor. The dispute stayed contained to the one issue it was actually about.

Halima's caution through the process, staying informed without escalating, meant the sibling relationship on that side came through the hearing intact. Tuan and Sagal's relationship was more strained afterward, though the estate itself closed within a few months of the order. For Sagal, the lesson was less about the money than about the sequence: get agreement or court approval before paying yourself as executor, not after.

She also came away with a clearer sense of what the online advice had left out entirely: that a rule of thumb repeated across search results is not the same as a legal entitlement, and that the gap between the two can be measured in real dollars once someone with a reasonable interest decides to ask a court to look closely. It cost her something to learn that lesson at a hearing rather than before one, but the estate closed with her reputation as executor largely intact, which was not guaranteed once Tuan filed his objection.

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