Perhaps you didnt understand the question? If advised that the estate will suffer pecuniary loss as a result of not "value adding", is the executor liable for the difference realised at sale?
Perhaps you didn't understand my question.
You certainly have not answered it.
When I asked
"Required in what sense?"
that was because there is no "requirement" to do this sort work prior to sale.
From your word "required", it is not clear just what are the "issues"
(of law...) that the executor is refusing to "recognise".
There's a difference between genuine "repair", and "improvement" in the sense of being new capital work.
Improvement suggests spending "now" with a view (a speculation) to a downstream return greater than the "spend" (ie: a capital gain).
Thing is, there is no duty to "do the place up"
- at the expense of the estate - with new capital works prior to sale.
For example, you might repair a deck, or paint a pergola, but not build a new one.
Or, you might replace an old and non-working built in barbecue, but not build a whole new outdoor area.
Having regard to the executor's general duty to preserve estate capital,
which can certainly include generally avoiding using estate capital to speculate with,
then I don't see how you could think that the executor was not acting responsibly.
I am pretty comfortable that an executor refusing to use estate corpus funds to do speculative capital works
is in fact acting prudently.
Lastly - of course, if you (the beneficiaries) choose, of your own motion to loan the estate - from your own personal funds - the money for new capital work,
then that's not impossible.
But you'd need to set it up properly... including providing for what you will do if the gain is not realised, or is not as great as you'd like.
