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How to choose an Executor 

When you are writing your Will one of the main things you need to consider is who will your Executors be. This is an important role with a lot of responsibility. Therefore who you should nominate as an executor needs some careful consideration. Remember the person or persons you nominate will be carrying out your wishes as you have directed in your Will but unfortuneatly you will not be around to check up on them.

In the previous post I explaned what their main roles and responsibilities are. In this post I am going to cover how you decide who your execuors should be.

You can nominate as many Executors as you want but only 4 can act. It is advisable to nominate at least 2 executors as two are required to sell land and houses. Most people nominate their spouse/partner and an other.

Firstly you should ask the people who you are going to nominate if they are actually willing to do the job. There is no point in nominating someone if when it comes to the time for them to act they refuse to do the job – they are not legally bound by your nomination. Below are the basic criteria you should be looking for.

1) Do you trust them? – this seems obvious but their role is to carry out your wishes as instructed in the Will. From a distribution point of view they are legally bound to do this properly as per the instructions. But for things like Funeral instructions they do not have to comply with your wishes.

2) How old are they? It is generally recommended that your nominated executors should be of a similar or younger age. This seems obvious but many people nominate their parents and years later when their parents have died they have not updated their Will and then there are no Executors nominated who are alive.

3) Where do they Live? It is unfair to nominate someone who lives abroad. Think about it. If they say live in Australia they may come back for the Funeral but would they want to stay around to sort out your estate, probably not.

4) Are they capabale of doing the job? As stated in the previous post there is quite a lot to do. although it is not rocket science if the nominated person cant fill in the forms or keep good records they will find it very difficult.

5) Willingness. We covered this in the information above.

6) Are they acceptable? Remember they will probably have to deal with the rest of the family, so do they get on with them. If not it will make the task more difficult.

For more information on writing your Will and appointing executors go here