Working with Others

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Over the course of settling an estate, you will interact with a variety 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 the heirs. Executors often facilitate these interactions by using EstateExec to grant access to the online estate for lawyers and heirs (see Share Access for instructions).

Lawyers

If you choose (or are required) to work with a 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).

Heirs

Executors who have good relations with the heirs may also want to grant such heirs access (typically "View Only") to the estate so that they can see where things stand. 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).

Courts

You will likely have to submit documents to the court concerning assets, expenses, and so forth. If you are using EstateExec, the best way to handle this is either to generate a relevant preformatted report, or to open the relevant EstateExec table (e.g., Assets), use the filter row at the top to just include what you want, and generate a PDF document. See Print Reports for details and options.