Legal Question in Wills and Trusts in Massachusetts

Re: Executor of will loses his copy

If the executor loses his copy as opposed to the original of the Will, no he cannot be sued.

If he loses the original of the Will, the Executor could be held liable for the cost of proving the original Will was lost and getting a copy admitted and accepted for probate by the probate court.

Re: Executor of will loses his copy

Can the executor of a will be sued if he loses his own personal copy of the will? Based on the way this question is posed, the short answer is no. If an executor loses a "copy" of a will, this suggests that there is an original. It is the original that is important. Further, the original would have been submitted to the Probate court and would be part of the court record. So the executor need only head on down to Probate and get a copy.

Now, the bigger question is what happens if an executor "loses" his copy of the will and the original (which has not yet been submitted to Probate) cannot be found. In other words, no proof of a will now exisits. Now there may be an issue raised by another interested party.

One would hope that, if the will was drafted by a qualified attorney, the attorney may have reatinaed a copy, or in many cases may be the holder of the original will.