A Clean Probate Application, Then a Fight Over the Fee

The situation

Jomar's father died in the spring after a short illness, leaving a will that named Jomar as estate trustee — the person responsible for gathering the assets, paying the debts, and distributing what remains to the beneficiaries. Jomar worked as a line cook, was married to Cristina, had never administered an estate before, and had one sibling, Kwame, a long-haul truck driver who was often away for weeks at a stretch and had a strained relationship with their father in his final years. The two brothers had never had to work closely together on anything, let alone something this personal.

Their father's estate was modest by most standards: a chequing and savings account with a local bank, a small registered retirement income fund, an older pickup truck he had used for hobby woodworking, and a handful of personal items — tools, some furniture, a coin collection worth a few hundred dollars. Altogether the estate was worth roughly $210,000. There was no real estate — their father had sold his home two years earlier and moved into a rental apartment, so the estate held no property that itself needed to be sold or transferred. The will split everything evenly between Jomar and Kwame, with no other beneficiaries named.

The bank holding the largest account told Jomar it would not release the funds without a certificate of appointment of estate trustee — the court document, commonly called probate, that confirms a person's legal authority to act for an estate. Jomar had never dealt with a court application of any kind, worried about doing something wrong that would delay everything for months, and came to Treadstone Law for help getting it right the first time rather than learning by trial and error.

What the file required

The application itself was, in the language estate lawyers use, clean. The will was properly signed and witnessed, it was the most recent version, and it named Jomar without any ambiguity about who was meant to act. There was no minor beneficiary, no missing sibling to track down, and no property outside Ontario to complicate things. The main work was procedural: preparing the court forms, calculating the estate administration tax owed to the province based on the value of the assets, and assembling the supporting materials the court expects, including a bond waiver clause already built into the will so Jomar would not need to post security guaranteeing his conduct as executor.

Even a clean file has room for a costly slip. Missing a single asset, listing a stale account balance from memory instead of the day-of-death figure, or under-reporting the value of the truck can mean paying too little estate administration tax up front — and then facing awkward questions later if the shortfall is caught. Our team walked Jomar through pulling a date-of-death statement for every account, rather than relying on whatever balance happened to show on a recent banking app, so the figures filed with the court matched what actually existed the day his father died.

The one detail that needed extra care was the vehicle. Personal property like a pickup truck does not have a title registry the same way real estate does, so its value had to be estimated and disclosed honestly as part of the estate's total worth for the tax calculation. Undervaluing it, even by accident, can create problems later if a beneficiary or the tax authority questions the numbers. Our team obtained a written estimate from a local dealer and used that figure rather than guessing.

The application was filed with the Superior Court, and the certificate of appointment came back within the timeframe typical for an uncomplicated file with no objections — a matter of months, not weeks, which surprised Jomar, who had assumed a document this straightforward would move faster. Once he had the certificate in hand, the bank released the funds to an estate account, and the harder part of the job began: settling accounts with his brother.

What we did

1. Explained executor compensation before Jomar raised it. Ontario has no fixed legal rate for what an estate trustee can charge for their work, but courts and estates lawyers commonly use a guideline of roughly five percent of the estate's value as a starting point for negotiation, adjusted for how much work the job actually took. On a $210,000 estate, that guideline pointed to about $10,500. We told Jomar this figure early, before he had spent a dollar of it, so he understood it was a customary reference point and not an entitlement he could simply take.
2. Kept a running account of the actual work. Jomar had spent time closing accounts, filing the tax return covering the period up to his father's death, arranging for the truck's sale, and corresponding with the bank and the court. We advised him to log hours and out-of-pocket costs as he went, because compensation is meant to reflect the real work of administering the estate, not an automatic percentage regardless of effort.
3. Addressed Kwame's objection directly. When Jomar proposed taking roughly $10,000 in compensation before splitting the remainder, Kwame pushed back hard, arguing his brother had barely done anything and that the figure would come straight out of his own share. The dispute risked stalling the whole distribution, since beneficiaries are entitled to see a clear accounting before final funds go out.
4. Prepared a simple estate accounting. We helped Jomar put together a plain summary of every asset, every debt paid, and every hour and expense tied to administering the estate, so the compensation figure was grounded in something Kwame could actually review rather than a number pulled from a guideline.
5. Negotiated a reduced, agreed figure. Rather than let the disagreement turn into a formal court process — which for an estate this size would likely have cost more in delay and expense than the dispute was worth — we negotiated directly with Kwame on Jomar's behalf. The two brothers settled on compensation of roughly $6,000, below the guideline rate but reflecting the actual scope of the work, with Kwame agreeing in writing to release Jomar from any further claim once the estate closed.

The outcome

The probate application itself succeeded exactly as planned, with no objections, no missing documents, and no delay caused by anything within Jomar's control — the kind of file that, done properly, simply works. The compensation dispute was a different story. Jomar did not get the full amount the guideline suggested, and he had hoped the process would close faster than it did once his brother pushed back. But he also avoided a court application over compensation, which for an estate this size would have consumed a meaningful share of the very money the brothers were arguing over.

After the roughly $6,000 in compensation and the estate administration tax and other costs were accounted for, the remaining balance — a little under $200,000 — was split evenly between Jomar and Kwame as the will directed. The estate closed within about a year of their father's death, which is typical even for a file with no major complications, once the practical steps of court filing, asset collection, and final distribution are added together.

Kwame's frustration never fully disappeared, but the written release meant the matter was actually finished rather than left to resurface. Jomar later said the hardest part of being executor was not the paperwork — it was managing his brother's expectations about a job neither of them had done before.

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