Working with Others

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Over the course of settling an estate, you will interact with a variety of people, from credit card representatives to social security agents, from notaries to estate liquidators, and more. It's a good idea to keep a copy of any key correspondence, and if you're using EstateExec, you can record notes about any item in its corresponding table entry.

Two additional types of interaction particularly stand out: coordination with an (optional) lawyer, and coordination with a co-executor. Executors often facilitate these interactions by using EstateExec to grant access to the online estate for lawyers and co-executors (see Share Access for instructions).

Lawyers

If you choose (or are required) to work with an lawyer (see Do I Need a Lawyer?), you will likely want to give the lawyer access to the EstateExec estate.

Executors and lawyers typically share all kinds of estate data, and EstateExec greatly simplifies and organizes that sharing, providing a central location for all data about the estate, so that either party can instantly check something about the estate at any time, or update it to reflect new information.

For example, lawyers commonly ask executors to provide organized information about certain assets, to sell off other assets and record the results, and so forth, EstateExec provides a convenient way to communicate this information.
Executors may also want to see the latest status on an allocation plan, or debt negotiations in which the lawyer is engaged, and EstateExec provides a convenient way to check without bothering the lawyer (potentially at a cost), and waiting for him or her to respond.
Sometimes the lawyer takes primary ownership of the EstateExec estate, giving the executor "View Only" access, sometimes it's the other way around, and sometimes both parties end up with "Edit" permissions (this is the most flexible, but requires some degree of trust that the other party won't mess things up).

Accountants

While many/most people track estate accounting themselves, not everyone is comfortable in this regard, or just may prefer to have someone else handle it. If you do decide to use an outside accountant, it's a good idea to make sure he or she is familiar with estate accounting in the estate's jurisdiction, since estate accounting differs from standard income tax accounting in a number of ways.

After Loss Professionals

There are a number of independent professionals who provide a variety of types of estate settlement assistance, ranging from general organization to residence cleanout, from estate accounting to probate real estate sales, and more. If you are using the services of such a professional, you may want to share estate access... or the professional may in fact be the one introducing you to EstateExec! EstateExec Tasks often provide links to services that can help with accomplishing the given task, and Task: Optional Executor Assistance provides discounted access to select general providers.

Heirs

Executors who have good relations with the heirs may want to share estate details, and within EstateExec can use the Estate | Share menu to give such heirs an ability to log in and view estate details. This kind of openness can help reduce any tensions and suspicions that, unfortunately, tend to arise even in the best of circumstances (see also Dealing with Heirs).

Keep in mind, however, that sharing direct access to an estate is not always ideal (even if View Only), and you might consider instead pointing heirs to the Guide for Heirs, and sending specific notes about anything important.

Courts

You will likely have to submit documents to the court concerning assets, expenses, and so forth... and most courts aren't interested in sharing online access to anything. Accordingly, to prepare information for submission to the court, you should either use the View | Reports menu to generate a preformatted PDF report, or export specific information directly from EstateExec tables (e.g., Assets, Cashflow, etc.): see Print Reports and Tables for details and options.