Difficulties Executors May Face
After cremations as part of the cremation services offered in Tallahassee, FL, the will of your loved one may name you as the executor of the estate. Being named the executor of your loved one’s estate is not all fun and games. In fact, executing even the simplest estates can take a lot of time and a lot of work.
If there are no obstacles, executing an estate will mean paying off debts, ensuring taxes are paid, accounting for all assets in the estate, and ensuring that assets are distributed according to your loved one’s stated wishes.
However, it is more likely that obstacles will crop up will you are executing your loved one’s estate. Some of these could have been preventable, if your loved one had done things a little differently, perhaps, but, in the end, they are the things you are going to have to live with and find ways to settle or work around in a fair and honest way.
One potential difficulty that you may face as an executor is that you are not the sole executor of your loved one’s estate. Sometimes, with sincere intentions of being inclusive and fair, people will name several people as executors of their estate.
This can be common among parents who want to either make sure all their children have a say in how their estate is settled or don’t want one child burdened with the entire responsibility by themselves.
However well-intentioned this is, it often creates more problems than it solves. There can be a lot of issues among the children that make it harder and that take longer to settle the estate than should be necessary.
For example, all the co-executors may live in separate locations, making it difficult for some of them to be involved in the estate activities that require hands-on involvement, such as securing assets or selling property.
Some of the co-executors may not have the skills to do the work of an executor, so they end up doing very little in settling the matters of the estate. Finally, as the number of executors of an estate gets bigger, so does the amount of estate paperwork that must be completed. Getting all the necessary signatures can slow down even the simplest of estate tasks.
Another difficulty that you may encounter in your role as the executor of your loved one’s estate is finding yourself in disputes with heirs of the estate (and if you are an heir as well, this problem can get amplified in a hurry). As the executor, your job is to secure all your loved one’s assets and then distribute them according to your loved one’s wishes.
However, in many cases, as soon as a loved one dies, the whole family, heirs or not, descends upon their home and starts putting dibs on what’s theirs (“they promised it to me”) or what they want. Some go as far as to actually remove items or money and take them with them.
One way to avoid this is to secure your loved one’s home and other assets as quickly as possible after they die. For real property, it’s a good idea to have locks changed, so that you are the only one with access, which also gives you complete control over how it is distributed.
For information about cremation services offered in Tallahassee, FL, including grief resources, our caring and knowledgeable staff at Lifesong Funerals & Cremations is here to assist you. You can visit our funeral home at 20 S. Duval St., Quincy, FL 32351, or you can call us today at (850) 627-1111.
