Timeline for Estate Settlement

The life-cycle of a Canadian estate can begin many years before death, with activities such as writing a will or pre-purchasing a funeral plan, or it can begin at the moment of death if the estate owner has opted not to do any advance planning. In either case, the person responsible for settling the estate (i.e., the executor) must then begin the settlement process, following required federal and province timelines.

Most estates take 6-18 months to settle, with settlement activities grouped into the following time periods (click a link for details):

If you are using EstateExec, it will create a customized list of tasks for you on the Tasks Tab, calculating due dates for particular tasks once you enter the estate owner's date of death.

There will also be a number of actions you need to take in the course of managing the estate that are independent of overall estate timeline, and just need to be handled as they arise (e.g., filing any annual property taxes, paying small business license fees, renewing property insurance policies, maintaining household property, paying utility bills, etc.).

You can visualize the overall executor process as follows:

See also Getting Started with EstateExec and Common Executor Mistakes.