My mother passed away last year and her will dictates the family home is sold and divvied up equally between the children. Probate was granted recently. I am the executor.A sibling and their adult child were living with our mum at the time of her death. The sibling moved out when she died but their son continued to live there pending the grant of probate. Now that probate has been granted, this person has left the house.Unfortunately they also left behind a house full of hoarded clothes and clutter, a garden piled up with months worth of domestic waste of all kinds and months of unpaid ESB bills in mum’s name (despite having said they’d put the bills into their name).I know as executor I have to settle all bills and prepare the property for sale. My question is, can I deduct some of these costs from my brother’s share? The will stipulates equal division of the proceeds if the sale, but it seems unjust that the other siblings will get less because one sibling had added substantially to the costs of administrating the estate!JCFamilies never fail to amaze me... and not in a positive way. I must assume that your sibling and their child were, among other things, caring for your mum before she died. That jars with your experience of your niece or nephew since then. Quite why someone could switch so quickly from caring for a relative and their home to suddenly treating the place like a dump is beyond me. Months of domestic waste in the garden will attract pests of all sorts and show a total disregard for the property and, indeed, their own family’s inheritance.But, given the behaviour, I suspect you might not have much success appealing to your relatives’ better nature to bear the cost of cleaning up their mess.That leaves you with two options – pursue them legally or have the estate pay up.As executor, you have as you note the legal responsibility for managing your mother’s estate. That means you need to ensure that all formalities are observed and no corners are cut.Which leaves you somewhat exposed here. You appear to have taken the word of your sibling and their child that they would transfer the electricity account into their own names. That was a mistake, as I’m sure you now realise.And it seems you never checked up on the property to ensure that it was being kept in good order, which was certainly remiss of you.Strictly speaking, if anyone was staying there after your mother died and while probate was being sorted, it should have been under a formal contract, including the transfer of electricity and all other utilities into their name. In that scenario, the utility would be charging the person actually using the service, most likely by direct debit, not leaving unpaid bills behind.Of course, that creates a tenancy which raises its own issues – not least as no one here appears to have been paying any rent.But even accepting a more casual and informal family agreement, you should have insisted at a bare minimum their paying promptly utility bills that should have been diverted to you as executor after your mother’s death – allowing you to keep abreast of things.If matters deteriorated as they appear to have done here, you then would have been able to nip things in the bud and, if necessary, even change the locks to secure your mother’s property.As it stands, it appears no bills have been paid since she died and domestic waste has been building up since then – which is disgusting, frankly, never mind the household clutter. The only good news for you is that you appear to have secured probate quite quickly, putting a stop to some distinctly antisocial behaviour.The responsibility for the estate remains yours and if there are bills in your mum’s name and you cannot persuade your sibling and their child to honour them, they will have to be paid out of the estate – as will any clean-up costs. And yes, that will adversely impact what each of your mother’s children receives following the eventual sale of the family home.Can you arbitrarily reduce the inheritance of one sibling to take account of bills you believe fall due to them? No, you cannot. And even if you could, it appears much of the accumulated bills and rubbish is down not to the sibling who is among the beneficiaries of the estate but their child, who is an adult and responsible for their own affairs.The alternative is for you as executor to pursue your niece or nephew legally for the amount outstanding on the electricity account and the cost of clearing up the rubbish strewn around the garden.But the cost of such action will come out of the estate, reducing the amount that everyone will receive. My experience of family legal spats suggests the legal bills would prove higher than the price to the estate of paying for the clean-up and settling the utility bills.Does it all leave a bad taste? Sure it does. Family betrayal always does. But beyond trying to shame your sibling – or, through them, their adult child – into meeting at least some of these costs to avoid the opprobrium of other family members, there is not a lot you can do at this stage.Your whole experience is a stark lesson to others who find themselves operating as executors on the wisdom of keeping things formal. Emotions often run high in Ireland around the death of close family members and any subsequent inheritance. There is no upside for an executor in going along with informal agreements or arrangements.Please send your queries to Dominic Coyle, Q&A, The Irish Times, 24-28 Tara Street Dublin 2, or by email to dominic.coyle@irishtimes.com with a contact phone number. This column is a reader service and is not intended to replace professional advice