Nominating your child as executor of your will may leave them with one of the hardest jobs they will ever do for you.
We often choose a child because we trust them – they know the family, understand our wishes, and we believe they will act in everyone’s best interests. But that appointment can leave them with months, sometimes years, of administration, legal responsibility and family pressure, all while they are grieving the loss of a parent.
Winding up an estate under the Administration of Estates Act is rarely simple, yet many South Africans hand this responsibility to someone close to them without weighing what it actually involves. FNB’s 2025 Retirement Insights Survey found that a family member or friend was the most common choice of executor, selected by 32% of people under 60 and 29% of those over 60. More than half said trust and reliability were the qualities that mattered most when choosing someone for the role.
Trust matters enormously, but the better question is whether the person you trust also has the experience, capacity and objectivity the role demands.
Nearly half of South Africans surveyed by Sanlam in 2026 had helped wind up the estate of someone they loved, yet only 22% described the experience as smooth. An executor has to turn the wishes in your will into reality – dealing with banks, investments, property, tax, debts, valuations and the Master of the High Court, and accounting for every decision along the way. The law entitles an executor to remuneration for this work, currently capped at 3.5% of the estate’s gross value plus 6% on income earned during administration – a reflection of how substantial the role actually is, even before family complications enter the picture.
One of our clients was appointed executor after her parents died. When she began gathering the information needed to wind up her father’s estate, she discovered he had not submitted tax returns for years. What followed were countless hours spent searching through boxes, dealing with banks and reconstructing financial information before his tax affairs could be brought up to date. She was capable, but she had inherited a job she had never been trained to do.
In practice, families should allow around a year for a relatively straightforward estate, and considerably longer for anything more complex. That matters when choosing an executor: your child may already be balancing a career, a family and their own financial responsibilities, and taking on an estate adds a substantial commitment to an already full life.
This, for me, is one of the strongest reasons to think carefully before appointing a child. After years of working with families following the death of someone they love, I have seen children become so caught up in winding up a parent’s estate that they have little space to process the loss itself. Behind the role of executor is still a son or daughter who has lost a parent.
Once one sibling becomes responsible for administering the estate, family dynamics can shift. They may find themselves answering questions about money, explaining delays and managing different expectations from siblings who are grieving too. I have seen disagreements over estates damage previously strong relationships – in one case, a client wanted to take legal action against her brother over how he had managed their parents’ estate, believing the family business had been undervalued and that she had been unfairly compensated. In another, two siblings inherited a holiday home: one wanted to keep it, the other needed the money and wanted it sold. What their parent had intended as something valuable to leave behind became a source of bitterness between them. These cases may be more extreme, but they show how grief, money and family history can be a difficult combination.
No rule says you cannot nominate an adult child as executor, and there will be cases where a child has the skills, understands the responsibility and wants to take it on. But the appointment should not be automatic. A professional executor brings experience and neutrality that can help keep difficult decisions, delays and disagreements around the estate separate from the relationships between siblings.
As a Certified Financial Planner, my role is to help clients think through decisions like this – not to draft the legal instrument itself, which is best done with an attorney. But the planning conversation belongs earlier: talk to the person you intend appointing about whether they want the responsibility, keep your tax and financial affairs up to date, organise your documents, and make sure your family knows where to find what they will need.
Who you choose to administer your estate is part of the legacy you leave behind. A well-planned estate considers not only what you want your family to inherit, but also what you would rather not ask them to carry.
Written by Kim Potgieter, Managing Director at Chartered Wealth Solutions