Executor duties can mean 50-plus hours of work and a $6,750 probate bill on a $500K Ontario estate — what Canadians should line up first

“People feel honoured or obligated to say yes,” Will Daley, senior vice-president of research and analytics at Canada Pulse Insights, said in a statement. The catch? What comes after that “yes” can drag on for months, cost thousands and sometimes even leave you personally on the hook if things go sideways.

Here’s what the job involves and what both sides can line up now.

How much time does being an executor take?

About 20% of respondents have taken on the executor role. The average time commitment was 35 hours, but nearly 4 in 10 logged 50-plus hours, and 17% lost track of the time entirely.

That workload gets dragged out over a long haul. According to ClearEstate data, even when there’s zero family drama, settling an estate typically takes anywhere from 12 to 18 months.

Being left in the dark only makes the job harder. Among Canadians who haven’t hired a professional executor, 44% have no idea how their designated person would actually find their assets and debts, including key accounts, deeds or basic passwords.

What does probate cost in Ontario?

In Ontario, probate fees are formally called the Estate Administration Tax (EAT). According to the Ontario government, there’s no tax on the first $50,000 of an estate’s value, and the rest is taxed at $15 per $1,000, which works out to 1.5%.

Here’s how that plays out: an estate in Ontario worth $500,000 would owe $6,750 in tax (which is 1.5% on everything over $50,000). You pay this upfront as a deposit when applying for the estate certificate, and it officially becomes the tax once the certificate is granted.

Not everything counts. Blaney McMurtry, a Toronto law firm, notes that jointly held assets that pass to the survivor are excluded from the calculation, as are registered retirement savings plans (RRSPs), registered retirement income funds (RRIFs), tax-free savings accounts (TFSAs) and life insurance with a named beneficiary. One caveat: without a surviving spouse, RRSP and RRIF balances are still fully taxable at death, and the estate pays that tax.

What’s the tax risk executors don’t see coming?

Here’s the trap many first-time executors fall into: you can’t just hand out inheritance funds right away. The CRA requires you to get a formal clearance certificate before distributing a single asset under your control. If they distribute without one, they’re liable for any unpaid amounts, according to CRA guidance.

In real life, an overly eager executor who pays out the inheritance too soon could get stuck footing the deceased’s tax bill out of their own pocket — up to whatever amount they handed out.