Executor Duties in NSW: A Guide to Your Responsibilities
Updated: Aug 27
Probate and Estate Administration
An executor is the person named in a Will to collect the deceased person's assets, pay the debts, and give what is left to the beneficiaries. The beneficiaries are the people who inherit under the Will. The estate is everything that person owned in their own name when they died. In New South Wales you will usually need the Supreme Court to confirm the Will and your authority to act. That confirmation is called a grant of Probate. Most estates take six to 12 months. You are not expected to know how to do this. You are expected to be careful, because an executor who hands out money too early can be left personally out of pocket.
What does an executor have to do in NSW?
Six things, in this order.
Find the original Will and secure the assets.
List what the estate owns and what it owes.
Apply to the Supreme Court for a grant of Probate.
Collect the assets and pay the debts and expenses.
Publish a notice saying you intend to distribute the estate.
Distribute the estate and account to the beneficiaries.
Each step is set out below. Three things are worth knowing before you start. How long it takes. What you are personally on the hook for. Whether you need a solicitor at all.
How long does it take?
Most estates take six to 12 months from the date of death.
The grant of Probate itself is only part of that. The Court publishes its current processing times on its website. Applications with errors in them go to the back of the queue, so it is worth getting the papers right the first time.
Two dates stretch every estate. You cannot safely distribute until six months after the death. A family member or dependant has 12 months from the death to bring a claim. Selling a house, overseas assets, unlodged tax returns and beneficiaries you cannot find will all add time on top.
What is an executor personally liable for?
This is the part nobody tells you. Being an executor is not a formality. If you distribute the estate too early, or ignore a claim, or pay the wrong people, the shortfall can come out of your own money.
Put two dates in your diary on the day you accept the job.
Six months from the date of death. Before that date you cannot get the protection the law gives an executor who distributes properly.
Twelve months from the date of death. That is the deadline for a family provision claim. A family provision claim is an application by an eligible family member or dependant asking the Court for a share, or a larger share, of the estate.
Distribute inside those windows and a later claim can leave you holding the bill. The steps below show how to protect yourself.
Do you need a solicitor, or can you do it yourself?
Honest answer. Some estates do not need a grant of Probate at all, and some executors manage the application themselves.
You may not need a grant if everything was owned jointly with a surviving partner and the bank balances are small. Banks set their own limits and those limits differ. Ask each bank what it will release without a grant before you assume you need one.
Get a solicitor involved if any of these apply.
There is real estate in the deceased person's sole name.
The Will is unsigned, damaged, homemade or hard to read.
The family is blended, or someone has already said they are unhappy.
The estate may not have enough money to pay everyone.
There are assets overseas, a business, or a trust.
Someone has threatened a claim.
Can I refuse to be an executor?
Yes. Being named in a Will does not oblige you to take the job.
You give up the role by signing a renunciation and filing it with the Supreme Court. A renunciation is a formal document saying you will not act.
Do it before you touch anything. If you start doing an executor's work, paying bills, collecting money or selling belongings, the law may treat you as having accepted the role. Undoing that needs the Court's permission, and it is not given as a matter of course.
You can also stay as executor and have a solicitor do the work for you. That is the more common answer for people who feel out of their depth.
Finding the Will and securing the assets
The Court needs the original Will, not a photocopy. Look in the house first. Then ask the deceased person's solicitor, their bank and the NSW Trustee and Guardian. The Supreme Court also holds Wills left with it for safekeeping.
Then protect what is there.
Lock up the house and the vehicles. Tell the insurer if the house is now empty, because most policies change once a property is unoccupied.
Redirect the mail. It is how you find accounts nobody mentioned.
Cancel cards and subscriptions. Notify Centrelink, the Tax Office and any superannuation fund.
Order several certified copies of the death certificate from the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages. Banks want their own copy.
Keep every receipt, statement and letter from day one.
Do not let anyone take belongings, even sentimental ones, until you know what the Will says. Families empty houses in the first fortnight. You are the one who has to account for what was there.
Making an inventory of property
You must list what the deceased person owned in their own name at the date of death, and what they owed. That list goes to the Court with your application, as the inventory of property.
Include real estate, bank accounts, shares and managed funds, vehicles, money owed to the deceased person, and personal belongings of real value.
Two things trip people up.
Superannuation is usually not an estate asset. The fund's trustee normally pays it to a nominated dependant, not to the estate. It only comes into the estate if the fund decides that, or the member directed it. Ask the fund in writing. Do not treat super as yours to distribute. Life insurance works the same way, depending on who was nominated.
Property held as joint tenants passes to the surviving owner automatically. It never becomes part of the estate, so the Will cannot deal with it. Check the title before you list a house.
Then list the debts. Mortgage, personal loans, credit cards, unpaid tax, utilities and the funeral account.
How to apply for Probate in NSW
Probate is the Supreme Court's confirmation that the Will is valid and that you are the person entitled to deal with the estate. Think of it as the Court's receipt. It is what a bank, a share registry or Land Registry Services wants to see before releasing anything.
First, publish a notice of your intended application on the NSW Online Registry website. You must then wait at least 14 days before you file.
Your application will usually include the following.
The original Will, and any later document that changed it.
The death certificate.
The inventory of property.
An affidavit, which is a written statement you swear is true.
A summons, which is the form that starts the application.
The filing fee depends on the gross value of the New South Wales assets. There is no filing fee where that value is under $100,000. Above that the fee rises in steps. Publishing each notice costs a smaller fixed fee. Current amounts are on the Court's website.
If there is no Will, or the named executor cannot act, someone applies for letters of administration instead. That is the same job under a different name.
Paying the estate's debts
Open a bank account in the name of the estate and run everything through it. Never mix estate money with your own.
The funeral and the cost of running the estate are paid first. That covers the funeral account, the Court fees, and the proper costs of getting the grant.
Then the debts. If the estate has enough money, every creditor is paid in full and the order matters very little. There is no queue in which the Tax Office is paid ahead of the credit card. What the law does set is which parts of the estate are used up first, and that affects the beneficiaries rather than the creditors.
If the estate does not have enough to pay everyone, stop. That is called an insolvent estate, and it is administered under rules borrowed from bankruptcy. Paying one creditor ahead of another can make you personally liable for the difference. Get advice before you pay anything beyond the funeral.
The notice of intended distribution
Before you hand out a cent, publish a notice of intended distribution on the NSW Online Registry. It tells anyone with a claim to come forward by a stated date.
It works like the sign in a shop window saying the shop is closing. Anyone owed money gets a last chance to speak up.
Publishing it is not compulsory. Distributing without it is a risk you carry personally.
Three conditions must all be met before the protection works.
At least six months have passed since the date of death.
The notice gave people at least 30 days to come forward, and that time has run out.
You do not know of a claim, or an intended claim, when you distribute.
Miss any one of them and the protection is not there.
Distributing the estate
Once the debts are paid and the notice period has run, you can distribute.
That may mean transferring money, transferring the title of a house or a car, or selling assets and dividing the proceeds.
You act for the beneficiaries as a group. You cannot prefer yourself, and you cannot sell an asset for well under its value.
Beneficiaries generally cannot force you to distribute in the first 12 months. Lawyers call that the executor's year. It is not a reason to go quiet. Tell the beneficiaries what is happening and roughly when, and answer their questions. Most complaints about executors start as complaints about silence.
At the end, give each beneficiary a statement showing what came in, what went out, and how their share was worked out. Keep the records. A beneficiary can ask the Court to order you to file accounts, which means handing your figures to the Court to be checked.
If you want to be paid for the work, you have to ask the Court. It can allow a commission for the time and trouble involved. A gift to you in the Will is often meant to cover this instead.
What if someone challenges the Will or makes a claim?
Two different things get called contesting a Will.
A challenge to the Will itself. For example, that the deceased person did not understand what they were signing, or that the document was never properly signed.
A family provision claim. An eligible family member or dependant asks the Court for a share, or a larger share, of the estate. In New South Wales the claim must be filed within 12 months of the date of death. A late claim needs the Court's permission, which is not given as a matter of course.
If either lands on your desk, do not distribute and do not ignore it. Tell the beneficiaries. Your job is to put the estate's position before the Court, not to take sides in the family. Most family provision claims settle at a mediation. That is a meeting where both sides try to reach agreement without a hearing.
What does it cost?
The cost has three parts, and only one of them is ours to set.
The solicitor's cost of getting the grant is fixed by law. New South Wales regulations set a scale for that work. The amount is worked out on the disclosed value of the estate's assets, so a smaller estate pays less. The scale is set by regulation, not by us. GST is added on top.
That scale covers the grant work. Taking your instructions, checking the asset details, preparing and filing the Court documents, answering the Registry's questions, and advising you on the grant when it comes.
It does not cover the rest of the job. These are charged separately.
Sorting the papers and obtaining valuations.
Tax returns and dealing with the Tax Office.
Working out whether an asset is part of the estate at all.
Transferring a house or shares into a beneficiary's name.
Publishing the notice of intended distribution.
Preparing accounts.
Ask any solicitor for a written estimate of that work at the start. It is the part that varies, so it is the part worth asking about.
The Court's fees and other out of pocket costs come on top again. The filing fee, the notice fees and any valuation fee.
Who ends up paying. The reasonable costs of administering an estate are ordinarily paid out of the estate, not by you.
The other half matters just as much. An executor who acts unreasonably can be ordered to pay costs personally. The usual reasons are distributing early, ignoring a claim, refusing to account to the beneficiaries, or running a dispute for your own benefit instead of the estate's.
What to do now
Find the original Will. Check the house, the deceased person's solicitor, their bank and the NSW Trustee and Guardian.
Order several certified copies of the death certificate.
Secure the house and the vehicles, and tell the insurer if the house is empty.
Write the date of death at the front of your file. Diarise the date six months after it, and the date 12 months after it.
Do not distribute anything, including sentimental items, until you know what the Will says.
Open a bank account in the name of the estate before you pay anything.
Start a folder and keep every receipt, statement and letter.
If anyone in the family has said they are unhappy with the Will, get advice before you take another step.
How we can help
You do not have to work out what kind of estate this is before you call us. That is our job.
We can tell you whether you need a grant of Probate at all, because some small estates do not. We can prepare and file the application, answer the Registry's questions, publish the notices, and set out the distribution so it holds up. We can also tell you plainly what you are exposed to and how to close that exposure off.
If a claim has been made against the estate, we can advise you on responding to it, and on whether the estate should settle or defend.
We act for people bringing claims against estates as well as for executors, so we run a conflict check before we advise anyone. Please call rather than sending the details of the estate through the website.
Disclaimer
This article is general information about the law of New South Wales as at 27 August 2026. It is not legal advice, and reading it does not create a solicitor and client relationship with Dormer Stanhope. It does not take your circumstances into account, and the law in other States and Territories differs. The law also changes. If you have been named as an executor, or you are a beneficiary waiting on one, speak to a solicitor about your own position.
