What's executors and trustees? Plz tell.

The executors have two main sets of responsibilities:

• ensuring that your estate is dealt with according to the law; and
• carrying out your wishes as you have set them out in your will.

One of the first things that the executors have to do is to value your estate, by assessing your assets and liabilities. This is so that they can determine whether any inheritance tax is payable, because in most cases the inheritance tax must be paid before a grant of probate can be obtained. It is probate that gives them the permission to distribute your estate.

The role of a trustee of a will trust starts after the administration period of your estate. If assets in the estate are to be held on ongoing will trusts, the executors pass those assets to the trustees of the will trust, who then become the legal owners of the assets and manage them in accordance with the terms of the will trust.

This explains why a will that contains a trust makes reference to the ‘executors’ and then, later in the will, to the ‘trustees’. If the will creates a trust of the whole estate, or the residuary estate, then the residuary estate is usually referred to as the ‘trust fund’ in the will.