The High Court has ordered that the costs of proceedings brought by an executor over the proposed sale of his late father’s home be paid from the estate. The costs are to be adjudicated if the parties cannot agree them.
In a judgment delivered on 31 July 2023, Ms Justice Eileen Roberts said the executor had no choice but to bring the proceedings to compel the property’s sale on the open market. The court was deciding the costs of those proceedings, not making the sale orders sought by the executor.
The deceased died intestate in 2016, survived by five children. His will had left his property equally to them. The principal estate asset was the former family home in Glasnevin, Dublin. Following earlier proceedings, the children and the legal personal representative of a deceased daughter became registered as equal co-owners of the property.
Terms of settlement in the earlier case provided for an open-market sale and equal division of the net proceeds. A High Court order made in February 2019 also directed that the costs of those proceedings be paid from the estate, with those costs to be taxed if the parties could not agree them.
A buyer offered €460,000 in 2019. The executor said the defendants refused to allow the sale and instead proposed buying the remaining two-fifths interest for €184,000. He argued that the full sale proceeds needed to enter the estate to meet its debts, including the earlier legal costs. The defendants disputed his authority to sell after the property had been vested in the beneficiaries. They said the new proceedings were unnecessary and that their costs should not be charged to the estate.
The defendants later accepted that legal fees from the earlier proceedings were due, while disputing their level. In an affidavit, they said those fees should be paid from the property’s net sale proceeds. Their later proposal returned to an open-market sale; the dispute before the judge concerned who should bear the costs of the new proceedings.
Justice Roberts found that excluding the property from the estate could leave little or no assets to meet the liabilities already ordered to be paid from it. She rejected the claim that the executor acted wholly unreasonably by refusing the proposed buyout, and said the defendants’ correspondence had not shown that they would separately contribute to the estate’s costs.
The judge acknowledged there could be argument over whether the special summons was the most cost-effective route. She considered it appropriate in the circumstances, noting that legal costs would have arisen through another court application as well. She ordered only that the costs of the present proceedings be costs in the administration of the estate, subject to adjudication if the parties cannot agree. The judgment did not determine the amount of those costs.