A court will not generally appoint an administrator who has a potential conflict of interest in the Estate

I would venture to say that an awful lot of people who read this blog have had to deal with someone in the family moving into the home of the deceased parents. Sometimes it's the executor and sometimes it's a beneficiary, but it's almost always a problem. Someone lives there without paying rent, the estate is delayed and everyone's nerves are frazzled by having to deal with this person.

So what happens in a case like that?

Our friend James Steele, a lawyer in Saskatchewan, has written a blog post addressing that very issue. He deals with a recent case in Saskatchewan called Whelan v Chaszewski. In that case, Michael Chaszewski passed away. One of his three adult children moved into his residence and refused to pay rent. The son in the house also dealt with some parts of the estate without any legal authority to do so.

An important issue that cropped up is that the son who moved into the house applied to the court to be appointed as the administrator of the estate. The other children also applied to be administrators, so a judge had to decide what to do about these competing claims. Would moving into the house have any effect on whether the son would be an appropriate administrator? As it turns out, the court thought that was a very important factor.

To read James' discussion of the case, click here to go to his blog called Saskatchewan Estate Law.