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Section 50: Power of High Court to appoint substitute for, or to remove, personal representative.

Administration of Justice Act 1985 · 1985 c. 61View on legislation.gov.uk

Part IV: The Supreme Court and County Courts

Where an application relating to the estate of a deceased person is made to the High Court under this subsection by or on behalf of a personal representative of the deceased or a beneficiary of the estate, the court may in its discretion—

appoint a person (in this section called a substituted personal representative) to act as personal representative of the deceased in place of the existing personal representative or representatives of the deceased or any of them; or
if there are two or more existing personal representatives of the deceased, terminate the appointment of one or more, but not all, of those persons.

Where the court appoints a person to act as a substituted personal representative of a deceased person, then—

if that person is appointed to act with an executor or executors the appointment shall (except for the purpose of including him in any chain of representation) constitute him executor of the deceased as from the date of the appointment; and
in any other case the appointment shall constitute that person administrator of the deceased's estate as from the date of the appointment.

The court may authorise a person appointed as a substituted personal representative to charge remuneration for his services as such, on such terms (whether or not involving the submission of bills of charges for taxation by the court) as the court may think fit.

Where an application relating to the estate of a deceased person is made to the court under subsection (1), the court may if it thinks fit, proceed as if the application were, or included, an application for the appointment under the Judicial Trustees Act 1896 of a judicial trustee in relation to that estate.

In this section "beneficiary", in relation to the estate of a deceased person, means a person who under the will of the deceased or under the law relating to intestacy is beneficially interested in the estate.

In section 1 of the Judicial Trustees Act 1896, after subsection (6) there shall be added—

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This legislation text comes from legislation.gov.uk. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. These source and reuse terms cover the legislation text, not Remedy's commentary.

Reuse reviewed 21 August 2026 under Open Government Licence v3.0.