sound judgment, provided he is paired with a capable and trustworthy person who will assist him.

It is valid for a testator to appoint more than one executor, whether he names them all at once or one after another, so long as he does not dismiss the first.
When several people are appointed together, they must act jointly; none of them may deal with the estate without the others. If one of them dies or is absent, the judge appoints a suitable replacement in his stead.

The executor may accept the appointment during the testator’s lifetime or after his death, and he is free to resign whenever he wishes, whether the testator is alive or has passed away. Likewise, the testator may dismiss the executor whenever he wishes, for the executor is merely an agent.

The appointed executor may not, in turn, designate someone else unless the testator has expressly granted him that authority—for example, by saying, “I permit you to appoint whomever you wish.”

For the appointment to be valid, it must concern a specific, identifiable matter, so that the executor knows exactly what has been entrusted to him and can safeguard and manage it.

A further condition is that the task assigned must be something the testator himself has the right to do—such as paying his debts, distributing the discretionary one-third of his estate, or overseeing his young children. Because the executor acts only by permission, he may deal only with what the testator legally controls, just like an agent. The testator is the principal, the executor the deputy; a deputy cannot wield authority over what the principal himself does not possess. Hence a will appointing a woman to act as guardian over minor children is invalid, for guardianship belongs exclusively to the father.