Executor

What it means

An executor is the person a will names to gather what the deceased owned, pay what is owed, and pass on the rest according to the will.

Being named is not the same as being appointed. Until a court issues the document that proves the appointment, an executor generally has no authority anyone is obliged to recognize — which is why banks ask for paperwork rather than for the will.

Why it matters

Almost every institution will ask who has authority, and the executor is usually the answer — but only with the court document in hand.

It is a job, not an honor, and it carries duties: keeping estate money separate, keeping records, treating beneficiaries even-handedly, and not paying whoever asks first when there may not be enough to go round.

Nobody has to take it on. A named executor can decline, and the will's alternate — or the court — takes over.

When you are likely to meet it

• When a will names you and somebody asks whether you are 'the executor'.
• When a bank, registry or agency asks for letters testamentary.
• When a will names an executor who has died, moved away, or does not want to serve.

How this varies by state

Some states call this role something else entirely, and several use one term for both a will-appointed and a court-appointed representative.

Related terms

• Accounting of disclosuresA list of certain disclosures of someone's medical records in the six years before the request. Narrower than it sounds: treatment, payment and the provider's own operations are left out.
• AdministratorThe person a court appoints to handle an estate when there is no will, or no usable executor.
• BeneficiarySomeone who receives something because a document says so.
• Compelled accountA court order that makes a fiduciary produce the books, obtained by somebody with an interest in the estate.
• Creditor claim periodThe window, set by state law, in which somebody owed money by the estate has to present the claim or lose it.
• DecedentThe legal word for the person who died. It appears on almost every form you will fill in.
• Digital assetAn online account or file that has value or meaning — email, photographs, cloud storage, domains, currency accounts, loyalty balances.
• Employer identification number for an estateA tax identification number for the estate itself, which becomes its own taxpayer once the person's Social Security number stops being usable.
• EstateEverything the person owned at the moment they died, treated as one thing that has to be settled.
• Estate accountingA statement of everything that came into the estate and everything that went out, presented before the estate can be closed.
• Executor compensationAn executor may generally be paid for the work. The payment is taxable income; an inheritance usually is not.
• Extraordinary servicesWork by an executor or estate lawyer beyond routine administration, paid for on top of the ordinary fee.
• FiduciaryAnybody who holds power over somebody else's money or decisions and is legally required to use it for them rather than for themselves.
• Fiduciary dutyThe obligation to act for somebody else's benefit rather than your own — and to be able to show you did.
• Final dispositionWhat ultimately happens to the body — and the phrase every authorization form uses, which is why it appears on paper before anybody has explained it.
• Final income tax returnThe last income tax return in the person's own name, covering the part of the year they were alive.
• Firearms after a deathGuns in an estate are property with their own federal and state rules, and moving one to the wrong person can be a criminal offense rather than a paperwork error.
• HeirSomeone entitled to inherit under state law when there is no will — not simply a relative.
• Independent administrationAdministering an estate without the court supervising each step — and it is granted in opposite ways in different states.
• Inventory and appraisementA list of everything in the estate with a value against each item, filed with the court or given to the beneficiaries.
• Legacy contactA person you name inside an online account itself, whom the provider will let reach it after you die. It usually beats anything written in a will.
• Letters testamentaryThe court document proving that the person named in a will has actually been appointed to act.
• Named insuredThe person the policy is written for — which, after a death, is the person who has died.
• Notice to creditorsA formal announcement that an estate has been opened, which starts the clock on how long anyone owed money has to say so.
• Personal representativeThe neutral term for whoever is authorized to act for an estate, whether named in a will or appointed by a court.
• Petition for dischargeThe filing that asks a court to release the executor and close the estate — and that starts your deadline to object.
• ProbateThe court process that confirms who has authority to deal with what somebody owned when they died.
• Probate bondAn insurance policy a court can require, protecting an estate against the person running it.
• Probate courtThe court that supervises estates. In many states it is a division of a general trial court and goes by another name.
• RenunciationDeclining an appointment as executor. It is always allowed, and it is done in writing.
• Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets ActThe law, adopted in most states, that gives an executor, trustee or agent a route to a person's digital accounts.
• SurchargeA court order that an executor personally repay the estate for a loss their own breach of duty caused.
• Waiver of accountingA signed document giving up your right to a formal account of what the executor did with the estate.
• WillA written document saying who should receive what, and who should be in charge of seeing that it happens.
• TestatorThe person who made the will.
• LettersThe court's certificate that somebody has been appointed to act for an estate: letters testamentary when there is a will, letters of administration when there is not.

Sahvelo guidance that uses this

• Being an executor
• When the named executor will not act