Who can I appoint as Executor to my Will?

If you are using our Expat Will service you may be living in a different country to your assets. This raises the question of who is most suitable to serve as your Executor. Aside from the general attributes; a person that you trust, and a person who is good with paperwork and things like filing taxes, you also need somebody who can work well with the beneficiaries and deal with potential conflicts.

 

You also have the choice of whether to appoint a personal friend or family member, or appoint a professional. If you do not know somebody personally who fits the general qualifications, you may be forced to use a professional but keep in mind that professionals are expensive. They usually work on both an hourly rate and also take a percentage of the estate. This means that if your distribution plan is straightforward, you could be paying tens of thousands of pounds or dollars for a few hours of work. A professional may also not be close enough to you to be aware of all of your assets, and have a strong sense of family heirlooms. We would recommend not hiring a professional unless you were completely stuck, or if your estate was incredibly complicated. Keep in mind that if you appoint a personal friend or family member, the Will gives them the authority to hire professionals as and when needed, and this would simply be at an hourly rate, not as a percentage of the estate.

 

For most countries and jurisdictions there are no citizenship or residency requirements. Certainly for UK and Canadian assets there is no residency requirement for your Executor. They may have to travel to the country to file the paperwork associated with probating the Will, but they are not required to be a citizen or resident of the country to do this.

 

On an ongoing basis, the Executor would be able to hire professional help located in the country of your assets, so they would not need to be in that country for the duration of the estate administration, but they would probably have to visit to start the administration proceedings. 

 

In the US, an Executor generally cannot have a felony conviction against them, and there are some specific State laws. For example, in North Carolina, they cannot be illiterate and in Florida if they are not a resident of Florida, they must be a relative or spouse (no other State or jurisdiction has this requirement).