Heard in the Office: “My Mom Named Me ‘Executor’ in Her Will and the Court Sent Me Some Paper about Being ‘Personal Representative.’ I Don’t Get It.”

Huge vocabulary switch, it’s going to take all of us a very long time to get used to.  This spring, the legislature cleaned out 200 years of laws concerning how we probate wills and estates and replaced those laws with a brand new set called the “Massachusetts Uniform Probate Code” (MUPC).

One of the many (many!) changes under the new MUPC is basic vocabulary.  The person that you name in your Will to manage everything after you die is no longer called an “Executor” but instead a “Personal Representative.”  So even if your parent named you “Executor” in her Will, the papers you receive from the court will use the term “Personal Representative.”  Same job, just a new name.