Crooked executors can sabotage estate plans

Something that I consistently say to seminar audiences is that each person needs to put more thought into who should act as his or her executor. My experience over the years has been that people make an "automatic" choice, either because they think they have to by law, or because they simply don't realize the damage the wrong executor can wreak on an estate.

Then there are the parents who name a child as executor, despite the parents' misgivings about the child's spending habits, honesty or other issues, because they don't want to offend the child. This is definitely a tough one for the parents and I sympathize with their dilemma.

I recently came across this article in http://www.capitalmagazine.ca/ that gives a vivid description of one estate that was seriously derailed by a dishonest executor. Click here to read it. The attached photo is from that website as well.