17 Sept 2026
The Honor and the Headache of Being an Executor
Being named the executor of someone's will can feel like an honor. It can also feel like a lot of pressure. It's more than handing out inheritances. It's paperwork, accounts, taxes, property, creditors, and sometimes family dynamics, stretched out over months or even years. A lot of clients end up in this role without ever planning to, and we're often the first call they make. Let's talk through how we help.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Speaker 1:
Being named the executor of someone's will can feel like an honor, and it can also feel like a lot of pressure. It's more than just handing out inheritances. It's paperwork, accounts, taxes, property, creditors, and sometimes unpleasant family dynamics. So this week on Plan with the Tax Man, let's talk about the honor and the headache of being an executor.
Hey, everybody. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for hanging out with Tony and myself here as we talk about investing, finance, and retirement. And Tony, as I teed up in the teaser there, it's some things that maybe you don't know about being an executor, some of the headache sides of things. It's a nice honor that someone, your parent typically maybe names one of the children, for example, to do this. But it does come with pressure and some things that can catch you off guard. So I thought it'd be good today to highlight some of this stuff.
Tony Mauro:
I think it's a great topic, because it's relevant in my world because I have several clients going through it now, a couple of family members, and then one that is a friend of a client. They're both clients. One passed away and the friend is named executor, so he's in a whole new role dealing with family that is not his family.
Speaker 1:
Okay.
Tony Mauro:
It's a whole dynamic.
Speaker 1:
Whole dynamic. I do want to note here, Tony, that this episode is not about giving legal advice, you are not an estate attorney, but rather the role that advisors that you and your team play, and questions that you often get or hear when a client has become an executor. So we're going at it from that standpoint.
Tony Mauro:
Yeah. I think that that's good, because we work closely with the estate attorneys, and they're the ones directing the legal side. We try to help out the executor, as we'll go through here-
Speaker 1:
Sure.
Tony Mauro:
... on everything else.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, yeah. I just want to make sure we clarified that for folks listening.
Tony Mauro:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
When a client finds out they have been named executor, Tony, what does that first conversation with them sound like from your end, or what are some bullet points here that folks might want to think about or need to know?
Tony Mauro:
Well, some of the things that we tell them right up front is, I ask them point-blank, "How much do you know, if anything, about being an executor?" Most don't know anything because most are surprised that they are, even sometimes kids. And so they really don't have any idea what's involved with it, even if it's a very simple, straightforward estate. It could go anything from very simple, all the way up to very complex. But I try to tell them, "This is going to be a time period. It's not going to happen in 30 days. Depending on how complex it is, it could be months to several years. There's going to be documents needed. There's probate. There's taxes." I try to lay all that out on a timeline so that I can get them thinking... "Don't get yourself overwhelmed. We'll help you. The estate attorneys will help you. You've just got to take one step at a time. Sometimes you hit roadblocks and you've got to move on." So that's the first thing we tell them.
The other thing is if they've already got an estate tax attorney working on it, which they usually do.
Speaker 1:
Right.
Tony Mauro:
If not, we'll refer them. But we try to point out to them things... Because they get confused on what pass
