A father sitting in our Manhattan office wants to treat his two adult daughters equally. To avoid perceived favoritism, he insists on naming both as co-executors in his will. This instinct is common, born from a sincere desire to maintain family harmony. Fast forward three years. The father has died, and the daughters are standing at a bank branch trying to open an estate account. Because they are co-executors, the financial institution requires both signatures in person. One sister took the subway from Brooklyn; the other had to fly in from Chicago.
This single administrative hurdle is just the beginning. Over the next twelve to eighteen months, these two women must jointly agree on every tax filing, every creditor payment, and the listing price of the family home. What began as a gesture of equal love has transformed into an administrative burden.
Estate planning is fundamentally about legacy stewardship. When we draft a will, we are not just assigning titles—we are appointing a custodian for your life’s work. The role of an executor is an active, demanding job. It carries strict fiduciary duties, legal liabilities, and a heavy paperwork burden. Appointing multiple people to share this job rarely divides the labor. Instead, it multiplies the friction.
The Mechanics and Liabilities of Co-Executorship
When you name co-executors, you legally bind them together for the duration of the probate process. They share the exact same fiduciary duty to the estate’s beneficiaries and creditors. Consequently, they share liability. If one executor makes a critical error—such as distributing funds to heirs before a known creditor is paid—both can be held personally responsible for the shortfall.
Because of this shared liability, banks, brokers, and title companies are naturally risk-averse. They almost always require the signatures of all named executors to authorize a transaction. If there are stock portfolios to liquidate, both must sign the authorization forms. If there is real estate to sell, both must attend the closing or execute individual powers of attorney. If one executor is highly organized and the other is unresponsive, the entire estate administration grinds to a halt. You are effectively tying a three-legged race where both participants must run at the exact same speed.
The Statutory Reality of Disagreement
Gridlock.
This is the greatest risk of naming co-executors. What happens when two siblings cannot agree on whether to sell the family home immediately or hold it to see if the market improves? What if they disagree on which real estate broker to hire, or whether to accept a settlement offer from a claimant against the estate?
Under New York law, this is not just a family dispute—it is a legal impasse. According to the Estates, Powers and Trusts Law (EPTL §10-10.7), if an estate has only two fiduciaries, they must act jointly to exercise their powers unless the will explicitly directs otherwise. They cannot simply outvote one another. If they reach a fundamental disagreement on a material issue, the administration of the estate is paralyzed.
To break the deadlock, the executors must turn to Surrogate’s Court. One or both will have to file a petition asking the judge to intervene and issue an order directing a specific action. This process requires hiring litigation counsel, drafting formal pleadings, and waiting for a court date. It drains estate funds to pay for legal fees and delays distributions to the beneficiaries by months, if not years. In the worst scenarios, the court may determine that the hostility between the co-executors is actively harming the estate, leading to proceedings under SCPA §711 to remove one or both fiduciaries entirely.
Deliberate Uses for Co-Executors
While I generally advise against naming siblings as co-executors merely to spare their feelings, there are specific, deliberate scenarios where appointing co-executors is a sound legal strategy.
The most common justification is pairing a family member with a professional. For example, a surviving spouse might be named alongside the family’s long-time accountant, a corporate trust company, or an attorney. In this arrangement, the family member provides insight into the family’s immediate needs and dynamics, while the professional handles the tax filings, asset valuation, and strict compliance with state and federal laws.
Another valid scenario involves specialized assets. If you own a closely held business, you might name your spouse as the general executor of your estate, but appoint a business partner as a special co-executor with authority limited exclusively to managing or winding down the company. This ensures a competent custodian handles the commercial assets, leaving the personal estate administration to the family.
Better Alternatives for Your Family
If your primary motivation for naming co-executors is fairness, there are better ways to protect your family relationships without compromising the efficiency of your estate administration.
- Establish a clear line of succession: Name a single, highly capable primary executor. This should be the person who is most organized, financially literate, and geographically proximate to where your assets are located. Then, name your other children or trusted individuals as successor executors. A clear line of succession ensures continuity without requiring joint action.
- Communicate your reasoning: Many family disputes in Surrogate’s Court stem from surprises revealed only after the reading of the will. If you explain to your children that you chose the sibling who lives locally purely for administrative convenience, you strip away the assumption that your choice was a measure of your affection.
- Consider a trust: By utilizing a revocable living trust, you can often bypass the probate process entirely. While you still need to name a successor trustee—and the same warnings about co-trustees apply—the administration of a trust happens privately and generally much faster than a court-supervised probate proceeding.
A well-drafted estate plan should remove burdens from your grieving family, not impose new ones. Designing a deliberate succession of fiduciaries requires looking past emotional instincts and focusing on practical outcomes. If your current estate plan names multiple fiduciaries out of a desire for fairness rather than function, schedule a 30-minute review of your existing will with our office to correct the structure before it becomes an issue for your heirs.
