Executors discretion in recovering his expenses?
2 years ago
The executor of the will (testator died in 2018) is old and not very legally-educated. Due to covid pandemic, things were delayed and a certain legal heir helped him file for probate of the will on May 10th, 2021. All legal heirs have given prior consent in trust and good faith without seeing the testamentary petition papers. But this certain legal heir abused their good faith and trust and overvalued their shares of the bequests and undervalued his own very drastically and made many other self-serving errors and omissions. The executor on finding this out declined his help and started the process to rectify these and many other errors. Whereupon this certain legal heir has put an interim application asking for injunction against the other legal heirs bequests and for removing/strictures against the executor for delay. The executor is now forced to hire a separate lawyer for the IA. Can the legal and other expenses of this IA initiated by this certain legal heir, be recovered by the executor from this certain legal heir share of estate only, as other legal heirs have refused to pay for this action not initiated by them? It is understood that all general expenses of executor and probate are to be recovered from estate, but what is the law for these kinds of actions brought about by individual legal heirs?
The answer to this question can be varied depending on what is mentioned in the will about the expenses of this nature. And you are right that the legal and other expenses are to be recovered from the estate.