Q: I agreed to buy a home about five weeks ago, and a bank approved my mortgage application. I have since canceled the sale, and thus the loan, for personal reasons that I’d rather not discuss. I know that I must pay the bank’s appraisal fee and other costs, but will my cancellation of the loan also hurt my credit score?

A: No, the home loan that you canceled shouldn’t have any effect on your credit report or overall credit score. A credit report does not show whether you were declined for a loan or whether you were approved for a loan and then voluntarily turned it down. The only reference to the mortgage you asked for (and then rejected) will be a note on the report that shows that the bank reviewed your credit history.

Q: My dad died in 1999, but my mother is a very healthy 85-year-old and still lives in their Boston home. Mom’s will was prepared by our family attorney and names me as the executrix of her estate, but now she wants to sell the house (which her will leaves to me) and move to a condominium complex in Florida where several of her friends have moved. It’s OK by me if Mom wants to move because she’s certainly capable of making her own decisions, but I’m not sure what my own responsibilities are because I am the executrix of her will. Please help!

A: Don’t worry. The duties of an executor or executrix don’t begin until the person who made the will dies. You don’t have any legal duties to perform regarding your mom’s planned move, nor any legal right to participate in the sale of her home.

Nonetheless, your mother should update her will as soon as she moves. If she doesn’t revise the will before she eventually passes away, the outdated document will leave you an asset that she no longer owns – her longtime Boston home – and put the onus on you to prove that you have the right to claim the condo that she’s currently planning to buy in Florida. This could add weeks or even months to the court system’s probate process, which already takes too much time and costs too much money.

An even better idea might be to have your mother form a basic living trust and list the new Florida condominium as one of the trust’s assets. By creating a trust, her condo and any other part of her estate that she wants to leave to you can automatically pass into your name without suffering the costly and time-consuming probate process that most wills must go through.