How to Hire an Executor. For your loved one’s estate or your will.
How much does a professional executor cost? Most people are surprised to learn that executor fees are the same whether you choose an experienced professional or your unemployed nephew who has lots of spare time. When people realize that they are paying the same cost, they will probably choose a professional executor.
When we chat with new clients, we ask them why they chose to look for and hire a professional executor. Here are the 5 most common answers. Perhaps you will see yourself in one of these situations.
There may not be any close family or friends due to old age or because the client is a Solo Ager. Or maybe a client does have close family and friends, but they do not live nearby, they have no time, or they are not financially savvy.
We have clients who served as executors and hated it. Because they hated being an executor, there is no way they want to burden a loved one with the task.
It could be the other way around: the friend or family member who they want to nominate was already an executor once and hated it, too.
Once clients realize that the executor fee is exactly the same for a professional executor versus a family member or friend, they can’t believe it! In most states, the law is the same. Whether it’s your unemployed nephew who needs money to start a rock band versus a seasoned professional with an experienced staff versus a bank: If you have that choice and the fees are going to be the same, why wouldn’t you name a professional executor?
In fact, hiring a professional executor may even cost less. An experienced and professional staff can reduce costs due to economies of scale, better deals with vendors, etc. We minimize a lot of losses because we can often do things quicker.
Many come to us after being rejected by their bank/brokerage, even if they have plenty of money and have been loyal customers for years.
Or sometimes, they are in the process of getting the bank to agree to serve as executor. But there are so many layers of committees and approvals from the bank. Those people come to us because we provide a more personal experience. With a bank, you’ll never talk to the person who will be the executor; it’s just “the bank.”
Lastly, people don’t like the bank’s requirement that a certain amount of money must be invested with them to qualify. You probably need between $3 million and $5 million just to talk to the bank. The bank also requires very specific investments: your money has to be invested in Brokerage Account “A” and the underlying investments must be in the Brokerage’s created funds. To put it bluntly, this is how banks can charge more fees.
This is similar to our #1 reason above, but more often we are seeing age gap siblings. Since we’ve been seeing this specific situation more often, we thought it was worth mentioning as its own reason. For whatever family reason, we’re seeing clients whose next closest sibling is 25 years older or younger! They don’t have a tight relationship due to the large age gap.
On the other hand, we have clients whose siblings are almost the same age, which doesn’t give an elderly client much hope that a fellow elderly sibling will be able to fulfill the duties of an executor. You want someone who will survive you or be young enough to handle stressful situations.
These are all great reasons to check out my book, “How to Hire an Executor,” available on Amazon. If you are part of our monthly email list, we give away one free paperback copy a month!
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Sign-up for your free consultation using the form above, and I’ll be happy to email you a free chapter from Anthony’s best-selling book “How to Hire an Executor.”
As we’ve spoken about before, Anthony can be your professional executor, even if you don’t live in New York. We have been seeing many inquires from out of state lately, and these are the top 5 looking for Anthony to be their professional executor.
Could you imagine doing a ton of work and not getting paid? It’s frustrating, but it happens. One of the drawbacks of nonprofessional executors is they are more likely to lose their executor fee, despite doing months, even years, of work for the estate.
What information are heirs entitled to, and how often can they request it? There is a delicate balance for executors to keep heirs in the loop without draining their time or estate resources in constantly responding to inquiries.
What is the minimum estate size that a professional executor will accept? A few prospective clients have called asking, so we’ll review bank executor minimums, our minimums, and some exceptions.
We’ll discuss a recent case study of how bad neighbors can harm probate real estate sale, and how to deal with them.
I am the professional executor for an estate with real estate that needs to be sold. During this process, we’ve had a neighbor with complaints.
First, the neighbor blamed our unit for a water leak. He had water damage in his unit, and he thought it was coming from us. Water damage can lead to mold issues, so we took the complaint seriously. We responded immediately and gave him access to a plumber.
The real estate is in a co-op building, which, as we discussed before, are a different animal! In this situation, the co-op manager appreciated our fast response to the problem.
As it turns out, the bad neighbor was blaming us for no reason. It had nothing to do with our unit, and the water issue was completely internal to his unit.
Second, the bad neighbor blamed us for a sudden infestation of bugs in his unit. His theory was that when we cleaned out our unit, something was shaken which caused bugs to move to his unit. We took the complaint seriously again and responded by giving him access to an exterminator of his choosing.
When selling probate real estate, you need to try to get along with the neighbors and building management. Getting off on the wrong foot with building management can make things very difficult for the executor. Even though we felt that the neighbor was not being truthful (as we saw no indication of bugs in our unit), we responded promptly. Again, the co-op manager appreciated our fast response to the problem.
It turns out that the bad neighbor cried wolf again. The neighbor’s hired exterminator was so dismissive of the neighbor’s theory that he didn’t even bother to spray our unit. Even though the cost of spraying would have been low, the exterminator said there was no point.
Despite all of this, the bad neighbor threatened to block our probate sale by lobbying the co-op board to not allow our unit to sell. However, the co-op saw that the neighbor lied twice and that we had been cooperative throughout the process. Thankfully, we did not need to worry about the board preventing our sale.
Those were the last of the complaints, but oddly enough, the bad neighbor sent us a buyer. He suggested selling to someone, so we looked into it. The bad neighbor “vouched” for an “investor,” which is odd because investors usually don’t do well with co-op rules.
The buyer turned out to be an inexperienced kid (late teens, early 20s) who apparently saw on Tik Tok how to flip probate properties. The kid offered a wildly high offer, which is unlikely to actually close at that price. As we’ve discussed before, if a wildly high offer does go through, it’s because the buyer nickel-and-dimes the price down to the asking price. This strategy is used to get the buyer’s foot in the door by making an attractive offer and thus eliminating the competition. (link to E291 What is a Strong Offer on Probate Real Estate?)
In this case, the heirs had been tracking the situation and understood that this buyer was recommended by the bad neighbor. Therefore, they were not bamboozled into demanding that we accept this “high” offer, like they might have been if they did not know the back-story. The bad neighbor actually helped us with this bad buyer. If we didn’t know who sent him, it would have taken more time and research to know to reject the offer.
This is a situation where a professional executor can help buffer and deal with curveballs. An inexperienced executor may get bullied with empty threats of blocking the sale, etc. Professional executors know what to look for and can help the heirs avoid the stress of threats. We continued to address the false alarms and adjusted our treatment of the bad neighbor accordingly.
To learn how a professional executor can help you avoid probate headaches, check out my book, “How to Hire an Executor,” available on Amazon.
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Sign-up for your free consultation using the form above, and I’ll be happy to email you a free chapter from Anthony’s best-selling book “How to Hire an Executor.”
Most people correctly assume you need a local executor in New York, but they may not know exactly why. Let’s review a few real-world scenarios and reasons why you need an executor local to New York.
We often get hired when someone has died, but no one wants to be the executor. Sometimes there was a will with nominated executors who don’t want to serve. Other times there was no will, but none of the next of kin want to do the job. So they hire us as the professional executor.
Many non-US heirs need a professional executor to get federal transfer certificates.
