Certificate of appointment of estate trustee (letters probate)

A buyer of a business owned by someone who has died needs to know who can sign for the estate. The estate trustee is the person responsible for dealing with the estate. In Ontario, the court process called probate gives a person that authority, or confirms the authority of the person named in the will.

What Ontario says

Ontario’s Administering estates page says an estate trustee is named in the will, or appointed by the court where the deceased had no will. It describes probate as a procedure to ask the court to give a person authority to act, confirm the authority of a named estate trustee, and formally approve that the will is valid. It also says probate is not always required and that the type of assets in the estate usually determines whether an estate should be probated. Under the Estates Act, s. 7(1), an application for a grant of probate or letters of administration is made to the Superior Court of Justice and filed in the office for the county or district where the deceased had a fixed place of abode; s. 7(2) and (3) set the office in other cases. See whether an executor can sell a family business.

What to ask

• Has probate been granted, and can the lawyer see the certificate?
• Is the person signing named in it, and does it limit their authority?
• Does the estate trustee need to sign for the shares or assets being sold? See estate administration tax.