Executor and life insurance

What is the name of your state? California.
The executor is the beneficiary to life insurance policies. The will stipulates that this money is to be used to pay estate bills. Should the money be part of the estate account ? Or can the executor deposit it into her personal account?

This sounds like a plan put together on one's own and without advice of one's council. Beneficiaries get the money from insurance and that money is their own. A will has no control over that money. That it has language describing what the executor should do with it is nothing more than a request.

I'd say the money is the executor's to do with as he pleases. If the beneficiary designation said something along the lines of "Joe Smith as executor" I might rethink things, but I don't know.

If the money is large, there's sure to be litigation over it because it is so unusual a way to do things there won't be a clear answer anywhere.