Being an executor an enormous job

You are entrusted with final wishes

Being asked to be an executor is an honor you might want to pass up.

Settling an estate involves tracking down and appraising assets, paying bills and creditors, filing final tax returns and distributing whatever’s left to the heirs. At best, the process is time-consuming. At worst, it takes hundreds of hours, exposes you to lawsuits and thrusts you into the middle of family fights.

Robert Braglia of New York, a certified financial planner, was executor of an estate where the woman disowned three of her four children and left most of her money to just one of her many grandchildren. That could have caused an uproar even if the family got along, which it didn’t: Two of the woman’s children were fighting over her ashes before she died.

Before you agree to take on this role, be clear on what’s involved.

It could take months

The time involved in settling an estate varies enormously. A small estate with few debts might be distributed within six to 12 months. It may take years to finalize a large estate with contentious heirs, lots of creditors or assets that are difficult to value.

A survey by Estateexec, an online tool for executors, found the typical estate took 16 months to settle and required 570 hours of effort. Large estates, worth $5 million or more, took 42 months and 1,167 hours to complete.

That doesn’t mean the executor has to put in that many hours, said CFP Russ Weiss of Doylestown, Pa. An executor can use some of the estate’s funds to hire an attorney and other help that could be more efficient than trying to figure everything out on their own.

“If you have other professionals involved — an attorney, a CPA, an investment person or wealth adviser — they’re doing most of the heavy lifting,” Weiss said. “Executors are like the quarterback in the administration of the estate.”

Executors may also collect a fee, with the amount depending on state law or what’s specified in the estate documents.

Finding documents

Even with help, executors should expect to spend many hours finding documents, inventorying assets and debts, arranging appraisals, communicating with financial institutions and government agencies, managing property and keeping careful records. If the estate includes a home, the house may have to be emptied of possessions and readied for sale.

Given everything that can go wrong and the time commitment, people should think carefully about whether they really want the job before agreeing to be an executor, says CFP Kate Gregory of Huntington Beach, Calif., who settled both her mother’s and her husband’s estates.