EXECUTOR FAILURE

It's very, very early on a cold November morning and once again I have woken up and found myself wondering whether it's actually possible to be a failure as an Executor...

After all, it's now over six weeks since mum slipped away into that long, dark night after which we spent the subsequent days in a kind of a daze running around registering this and telephoning that and having various meetings explaining - or not - how things were likely to proceed.

Certain pieces of paperwork have - with a lot of assistance from people far less intimidated by such things than I am - been filled in and sent, and returned with yet more forms, of which none can be sent back because I don't have the "official" recognition that is required due to, I'm beginning to think, a lack of foresight on someone's part which might, eventually, turn out to be me.

You see, the Executor of my Mum's Estate was supposed to be my long-deceased Dad and, in the event of his predeceasing her, then that duty fell to the family solicitor. During our initial meeting with him, he told us that, because it would simplify matters, he would transfer that duty upon myself and ever since then we've been waiting to hear about whether that's actually happening, is about to happen, or won't be allowed to happen.

In the meantime, because of all the telephone calls we made, letters are starting to appear making demands of the Executors which, because I am not actually the proverbial "it" in that game of tag yet, I have to ignore in the expectation of a shit-storm of final demands and bailiffs demanding recompense no doubt with interest.

Because, in the understanding that in a relatively short period of time I would be, we've told them all that I am the Executor, and whilst that will no doubt turn out to be true eventually, for the moment it's not quite as accurate a description as we expected it to be.

I find myself wondering whether, in genuine good faith, we've gone about things in a decidedly wrong manner, but then there doesn't appear to be anyone who's prepared to tell me precisely what the right way ought to have been, and my various emails to the solicitors don't ever seem to get replies which either means that things are progressing as they ought to be, or they've somehow gone astray again and the whole situation remains in a kind of limbo with both sides wondering what the hell is going on.

And all the time that old phrase "Ignorance of the Law is no defence" and all those disclaimers about making false declarations which plaster those many wodges of paperwork swim across the back of my mind like so many accusations and I wonder whether I'm going to end up bankrupting myself or the Estate by simply continuing on like this, and it is, quite frankly, still scaring me rigid.

And that kind of fear, of course, like being a rabbit caught in the headlamps, can make me even less capable of dealing with it all...

In the meantime, I find myself wondering what I should be doing because there's no real guidebook for situations like this when they drop unexpectedly into your life, and I don't like owing people money, and some of those letters come across as quite intimidating, and time ticks slowly by, and the weeks and months start to pass, and it's not really all that easy to make the necessary telephone calls in an office environment and, in the end, I simply do not know what I should be doing...

If anything…

((By lunchtime that same day, of course, the emails had been replied to and the appointments made and the entire process was back on track, but that doesn't detract from that overnight anxiety and, of course, means that the "fun" is only just beginning…))