Passing accounts is the court's audit of an estate trustee. You file the accounts in the prescribed form, serve everyone with an interest, and the court either approves them and fixes your compensation, or hears the objections first.
Our charges include applicable taxes. Disbursements are extra and billed at cost — itemized upfront, in writing, never hidden.
From $563.87 taxes included
If every beneficiary is an adult with capacity, and each of them reviews your accounts and signs a release approving both the accounts and your compensation, the administration is finished. No application, no court filing fees, no hearing, no lawyer arguing about a decade-old withdrawal. That is how the large majority of Ontario estates end, and it is worth real effort to get there — including circulating draft accounts early, before positions harden.
You cannot take that route where a beneficiary is a minor, unborn or mentally incapable, because nobody can consent on their behalf. You will also end up in court where a beneficiary formally demands an accounting, where the Office of the Children's Lawyer or the Public Guardian and Trustee has an interest to protect, or where compensation is disputed. A beneficiary can apply for an order compelling you to pass accounts.
The same machinery applies outside estates. An attorney acting under a continuing power of attorney for property, and a court-appointed guardian of property, can both be required to account for what they did with someone else's money under the <a href="https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/92s30">Substitute Decisions Act, 1992</a>. Adult children who suspect a sibling drained a parent's accounts before death start here rather than with a will challenge.
Even where nobody is forcing you, passing accounts voluntarily buys something a stack of signed releases cannot: a court order. It fixes your compensation, approves what you did over the period the accounts cover, and closes the door on second-guessing by a beneficiary who changes their mind two years later. In a family that is already arguing, that finality is usually worth the cost of buying it up front.
Estate accounts are not a bank statement or a spreadsheet of payments, and this is the point at which most trustees need help. The prescribed format requires a statement of the assets at the date of death cross-referenced to the accounts, an account of all money received and an account of all money disbursed, an account of any investment transactions, statements of the unrealized assets, of the money and investments on hand and of the liabilities at the closing date, and a separate statement of the compensation claimed. Where the will or trust deals separately with capital and income, receipts and disbursements must be shown separately for each. Everything has to reconcile.
The capital and revenue split is where home-made accounts fall apart. Sale proceeds of a house are capital; the rent it earned before the sale is revenue. The distinction matters because different beneficiaries may be entitled to each, and because compensation is calculated across the categories separately. Splitting entries as you go is far cheaper than reconstructing them later.
Every entry needs a voucher behind it — an invoice, a bank record, a receipt. The court does not audit each line, but an objector can demand the backup for any of them, and the trustee carries the burden of explaining. Entries you cannot support are the ones that get disallowed and repaid personally.
The application itself is served on every beneficiary and anyone with a contingent interest, plus the Children's Lawyer or Public Guardian and Trustee where a minor or incapable person is involved, within the timelines set by the rules. Court filing fees apply. Anyone who disagrees files a notice of objection to accounts before the hearing date.
If no objection is filed, an unopposed passing is usually decided in writing without anyone attending, with costs allowed on a fixed scale. If an objection is filed, the application turns into contested litigation with evidence, cross-examination and a real costs exposure. The gap between those two outcomes is the reason trustees negotiate hard before the deadline.
Objections that work are particular: a specific withdrawal with no explanation, a property sold below market to a related party, compensation calculated on assets that passed outside the estate, occupation rent for a beneficiary who lived in the estate house free, a loss caused by leaving funds uninvested for years. General dissatisfaction with the trustee is not an objection.
The trustee answers each objection in writing before the hearing, item by item, and the burden of explaining the account stays on the trustee throughout. This is where poor record-keeping becomes expensive. A sensible decision with no paper trail behind it can lose to a weak objection that comes with documents, because the court assesses what you can show rather than what you remember.
Costs do not automatically come out of the estate. A trustee whose accounts were deficient can be ordered to pay personally, and an objector who forced a hearing over nothing can be ordered to pay too. The judgment that follows a successful passing approves the accounts, fixes compensation, and lets you distribute the remainder and close the file.
Not if every beneficiary is an adult with capacity and each signs a release approving your accounts and compensation. You do have to if a beneficiary is a minor or incapable, if the Children's Lawyer or Public Guardian and Trustee has an interest, or if a beneficiary demands an accounting and the court orders one. Compensation disputes end up here too.
Yes. A beneficiary, a creditor, or anyone else with a financial interest in the estate can apply for an order requiring you to account. Courts grant these readily, because the right to an accounting is one of the basic protections a beneficiary has. Refusing informal requests usually just adds a costs order to the same outcome.
Reconstruct what you can from bank and credit card records, and disclose the gaps rather than hiding them. Trustees are not held to perfection, and courts routinely accept reasonable explanations for small unvouched items. What they do not accept is a trustee who cannot explain a significant payment, and unexplained entries are the ones ordered repaid personally.
An unopposed passing moves at the pace of the court's scheduling and is usually decided in writing without a hearing. A contested passing behaves like any other piece of litigation, with documents, cross-examinations and a hearing date, and takes considerably longer. Preparing the accounts properly before filing is what shortens either version.
It protects you for the period the accounts cover and the matters they disclose. A judgment passing accounts approves your administration for that window, which is why trustees in contentious families ask for it even when nobody has demanded it. It does not protect you for anything you concealed, or for anything outside the period covered.
Open your file tonight — a licensed Ontario lawyer will confirm everything with you by tomorrow.