Can anybody tell me if the executors of a will are entitled to deducted all their expenses involved in excuting their duties e.g. telephone,postage,travel exes.time spent on carrying out Probate etc., Is this ethical and legal?
A solicitor can answer in detail but I know from indirect experience that if you have receipts for expenses they are not a problem. Claming for your time sounds like it could throw up a few problems, e.g. who sets your hourly rate?
Yes, as long as the executor didnt witness the will ( if there is no charging clause in the will), they are legally entitled to their reasonable expenses. As for the morals, well thats a matter for yourself.
Purple
I suppose what I was getting at re the time is that I spent two days of my own time carrying out Probate. This effectively saved the rest of my family almost 6,000 euro which my solicitor has said he would charge for doing this. I thought it may be reasonable to claim for my time in this case. Apart from that I had to travel from Dublin to Waterford and at least 8 occasions to help clear the house when before it went for sale. Again this meant I had to take time off work in order to do this. I have no wish to claim more than what would be considered fair - perhaps the current minimum hourly wage would be fair?
Hmmmmm! I think you will find that technically if the deceased appointed you as Executor and you undertook to so act this is a service which traditionally does not entail a fee or allowance for one's time.
I said ' expenses', although if the executor is for eg a solicitor or accountant and is doing professional work on the estate, they are entitled to charge professional fees.
Glueless is questioning whether s(he) can claim for 'time spent on carrying out Probate' and has specified other periods 'off work' to 'clear out the house' etc. which in my vocabulary could not be defned as 'expenses' which in my vocabulary would include costs of death-certificates, funeral expenses etc.
Read the posts again, Marie. If Glueless has lost out on paid remuneration as a result of his/her executors duties then I would class this as an expense too, but they also query travel expenses.