A person appointed to be the executor of a will shall not have the powers of executor until he or she qualifies by taking an oath and giving bond, unless not required to post bond by §44-1-8 of this code, which shall then be admitted to the records of the clerk of the county in which the will, or an authenticated copy thereof, is admitted to record, except that he or she may provide for the burial of the testator, pay reasonable funeral expenses, and preserve the estate from waste.
W. Va. Code § 44-1-1
Executor has no powers before qualifying
Applied in 3 court decisions — leading case 221 W. Va. 266 - Haines v. Kimble (2007)
Most recently applied in 2025 Pa. Super. 103 - Edwards, D. v. Norfolk Southern Railway (May 2025)
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: West Virginia Legislature. Reproduced from public-domain West Virginia statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.