Enter Debt

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See Taking Inventory for a definition of "debt", and some overall advice.

Create a Debt

To record the existence of an estate debt,

  1. Click the "Create Debt" button on the Debts tab, causing a new row to appear at the top of the table.
  2. Click each cell of the new row and enter whatever information you have (ignore the Paid and Forgiven cells for now).
  3. As always, whenever you want to save your changes, click the "Save All" button in the top right corner.

Borrow Money for the Estate

Borrowing money for the estate creates a special kind of debt, which results in cash being deposited in the estate account.

  1. Click the "Borrow" button on the Debts tab, causing Cash Transaction dialog to appear.
  2. Select the Category: a standard "Loan" from anyone, or an "Executor Loan" from the executor (important for reporting purposes).
  3. Fill out the rest of the dialog and press "OK".

Creating a loan in this way will automatically create a matching deposit in the estate Cashflow account.

To edit such a "borrow" transaction, either select the debt row (using the checkmark on the far left) and press the "Borrow" button again, or edit the transaction directly via the Cashflow tab.

Changes to a Debt

See the following topics to record a payment to reduce a debt, or to record the forgiving of a debt.

Additionally, it's not uncommon for the value of a debt to change over time, due to ongoing interest or other causes. You can record those changes simply by entering the total value currently owed in the "Value Now" column of the debt.

Debts Table Notes

Here are a few helpful things to know about the Debts table:

  • Account: Some debts have an associated Account ID (such as mortgage loan). You can optionally choose to display an Account column by checking "Account" in the menu in the top right of the table.
  • Forgiven: If a creditor forgives all or part of a debt, the debt's "Owed Now" amount will be reduced by the forgiven amount. See Resolving Debts for more information.
  • Owed Now: When you first enter the "Owed at Death" amount, EstateExec will automatically populate the "Owed Now" field. You can change the "Owed Now" field whenever you like (for example to reflect accumulating interest), but it's not important to keep it frequently updated, and you will be given an explicit chance to update this field when actually resolving the debt.
  • Paid: Once you make a payment on a debt, its "Owed Now" will be reduced by the payment amount, and the payment will be added to the "Paid" amount. See Pay Off Debt for more details and instructions for handling multiple payments.
  • Probate: Identifies whether the debt is subject to probate. This column is not shown by default, but you can make it visible by checking "Probate" in the menu in the top right of the table. EstateExec automatically assumes all debts are subject to probate, but you can override this setting for a given debt by clicking the debt's probate table cell.

See also Using Tables for an illustration of many things you can do with EstateExec tables in general.

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