We live in a very mobile society. Many of us have parents, siblings, or children who live in different provinces or different countries. For many aspects of our daily lives, it doesn’t make much difference, other than the difficulty in having regular visits. For estates, however, it makes a huge difference.
In Ontario, the courts have the right, at any time, to require an executor to pay a bond – basically, an insurance policy – to cover up to twice the value of the estate, in order to ensure that the beneficiaries are protected in the event that the executor disappears with the estate money. In practice, courts rarely ask for an estate to be bonded when the executor lives in Ontario. The further away the executor lives, however, the more difficult it gets.
If your executor lives in another province in Canada, usually they’ll be okay. If they live in a Commonwealth country, maybe they’ll be okay. If they live anywhere else – and that includes the United States – they will almost certainly be required to get a bond. This will result in increased costs to your estate, and will also make the entire administration take significantly longer.
If you have no one else, then by all means, pick an executor who lives further away. But if you have options, it is always better to pick Ontario resident executors.
