executors – Charles Cooper

Fernandez v. Fernandez [2025] EWHC 2373 (Ch)

When deciding to remove an executor under s.50 AJA 1985 the test is not whether ‘continuation in office would impede the due administration of the estate or cause harm to the beneficiaries’, nor whether the ‘estate was endangered’, and the Court was entitled to take into account various conflicts of interest and ‘that personal hostility…
Read more: Fernandez v. Fernandez [2025] EWHC 2373 (Ch)
Osborne & Anor v. Osborne [2025] EWHC 455 (Ch)

A residuary beneficiary is removed as executor where the Court had ‘not found that he was guilty of any wrongdoing and, in particular, that he has consciously preferred his own interests to the interests of the estate… [but] that the Letter of Wishes and the Defendant’s reliance on it give rise to a conflict’: https://caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ewhc/ch/2025/455
Read more: Osborne & Anor v. Osborne [2025] EWHC 455 (Ch)
Stoney-Anderson v. Abbas [2023] EWHC 2964 (Ch)

An executor loses indemnity for costs in fighting his removal ‘when it ought to have been obvious that… in light of the allegations made against him, the administration of the estate would not be carried out effectively and properly so long as he remained’: https://caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ewhc/ch/2023/2964
Read more: Stoney-Anderson v. Abbas [2023] EWHC 2964 (Ch)

Charles Cooper | Barrister