The Supreme Court of British Columbia has no inherent jurisdiction to award or vary remuneration to an executor/ trustee where the remuneration is agreed to or stipulated in the trust agreement or in a will. Re Edy 1982 CarswellBC 311.
The court’s power to fix the remuneration of a trustee is statutory under the Trustee act.
The court found it significant that the provisions of section 90 of the Trustee act RSBC, the section which provides that it is lawful for the Supreme Court to allow a trustee, a fair and reasonable allowance, not exceeding 5% of the gross aggregate value, including capital and income of all of the assets of the estate, by way of remuneration for the trustees care, pains, trouble and time expended in or about the trusteeship.
The court held that it was bound by the previous decision of re Holmes (1916) 10 OWN 354 and re Robertson 1949 OWN 390 to mean that there is no inherent jurisdiction in the Supreme Court to increase the remuneration to a trustee, where the remuneration has been agreed to in the trust agreement.
The same reasoning would likely apply to the trustee of a will