Well, I can tell you what happened in my case.
I live on one side of the country close to where my mother lived, and my sister lived on the other side of the country. She rarely visited. I handled every aspect of caring for my mother as she got older, and was glad to do it. Doctor and hospital visits, home maintenance, car maintenance, snow removal, landscaping, appointments, shopping, ultimately nursing home selection and placement, I was there every step of the way.
After my mother's death I was the Executor. Every room of the house was packed with stuff, mostly of very little monetary value . I went through it all. Little by little I got it all done, over the course of a year. Almost every weeknight, every weekend, that was my second job, It was exhausting.
My sister came by one time and filled a POD with all the stuff she wanted and anything of value such as silver sets, etc. I was happy to let her have what she wanted and didn't dispute anything.
After a year of almost every night after work and every weekend.....cleaning out the house, sorting through papers, disposing of all the junk, then getting the house ready for sale.....cleaning, ripping out old carpet, installing hardwood, painting, landscaping you name it, the house was sold.
After all this, the attorney recommended I take a small executor's fee knowing all of the time and work I spend doing everything I could myself, with no help, to save the estate money.
Well, when my sister got the paperwork and saw the executors fee, she went off the deep end. I could never have guessed she would react this way. In order to try to save the relationship, I agreed to drop the fee, but she made settling the estate a nightmare from that point on, refusing to sign papers, just being difficult every step of the way.
I did all the work, she got handed a check, and to this day, she rarely communicates with me.
If I had to do it over again, I would have hired someone to do all the junk clearing, scrubbing, cleaning, paining, ripping out carpets, sprucing up the house etc, and let the estate pay for it all and be done with it.
My point is it's difficult to know how others may react when taking the fee and when money is involved, people's character can change very quickly.