10Real and personal estate to be assets

##### 10. Real and personal estate to be assets (1) The real as well as the personal estate of every deceased person shall be assets in the hands of the executor to whom probate has been granted or administrator, for the payment of all duties and fees and of the debts of the deceased in the ordinary course of administration. (2) No executor or administrator shall hereafter have or exercise any right of retainer. (3) An executor to whom probate has been granted or administrator may, for the purposes of administration, sell or lease such real estate, or mortgage the same, with or without a power of sale, and assure the same to a purchaser or mortgagee in as full and effectual a manner as the deceased could have done in his lifetime. (4) An executor or administrator of the estate of a person who dies on or after the day on which the *Acts Amendment (Insolvent Estates) Act 1984* comes into operation shall not have or exercise any right to give preference as between creditors standing in equal degree. (5) Notwithstanding subsection (4), an executor or administrator who — (a) in good faith and at a time when he has no reason to believe that the estate of the deceased is insolvent, pays a debt, other than a debt payable to himself in his own right, of a person who is a creditor of the estate; or (b) not being an administrator to whom letters of administration have been granted solely by reason of his being a creditor, in good faith and at a time when he has no reason to believe that the estate of the deceased is insolvent, pays a debt payable to himself in his own right as a creditor of the estate, shall not, if it subsequently appears that the estate is insolvent, be liable to account to a creditor of the same degree as the paid creditor for the sum so paid. [Section 10 amended: No. 62 of 1955 s. 3; No. 72 of 1984 s. 4.]