Estate Settlement Questions, Answered
Clear, plain-language answers to the specific questions that come up while settling an estate — accounts, subscriptions, retirement plans, insurance, and probate itself.
Digital Assets After Death: Social Media, Email, and Online Accounts
What happens to email, social media, and cloud storage accounts after death, how RUFADAA gives executors a legal framework to manage them, and how platform tools like Legacy Contact fit in.
Read the guide →Executor Duties Checklist: A Step-by-Step Guide
A step-by-step checklist of what an executor actually does — from locating the will and opening probate through paying debts, filing taxes, distributing assets, and closing the estate.
Read the guide →How Long Do You Have to Settle an Estate?
Whether executors face a hard deadline to settle an estate, the 'reasonable diligence' standard that actually applies in most states, and what happens if things drag on too long.
Read the guide →How to Cancel a Deceased Person's Subscriptions and Recurring Bills
How to find and cancel a deceased person's streaming services, memberships, and recurring bills — what to cancel first, what documents providers ask for, and what to keep.
Read the guide →How to Close a Bank Account After a Death
How an executor closes a deceased person's bank account: what documents the bank requires, how joint and payable-on-death accounts differ, and why acting promptly matters.
Read the guide →How to File a Life Insurance Claim After a Death
Step-by-step guide to filing a life insurance claim: how to locate a policy, what documents insurers require, typical payout timelines, and what the contestability period means.
Read the guide →How to Find Out If a Parent Prepaid for Their Funeral
How to check whether a deceased parent already arranged and paid for their funeral — where the paperwork usually is, how to confirm with the funeral home, and how to avoid paying twice.
Read the guide →How to Get Letters Testamentary (and Why You Need Them)
What Letters Testamentary and Letters of Administration are, why banks and other institutions require them, and how to get them from the probate court.
Read the guide →How to Handle a Safe Deposit Box After a Death
How to access a deceased person's safe deposit box: what changes if it was jointly held versus solely owned, what documents the bank requires, and what to expect from the process.
Read the guide →How to Notify Social Security of a Death (and the $255 Benefit)
How to report a death to the Social Security Administration, why you should confirm it even if a funeral home already did, and how to apply for the $255 lump-sum death payment.
Read the guide →How to Notify the Credit Bureaus of a Death
How to report a death to Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion — what documents you need, who's allowed to notify them, and why acting quickly protects against identity theft.
Read the guide →How to Transfer a Car Title After the Owner Dies
How to transfer a vehicle title after the owner's death — through probate, a small-estate affidavit, or a transfer-on-death designation — and what documents the DMV typically requires.
Read the guide →Intestate Succession: What Happens Without a Will
What happens when someone dies without a will: how state intestate succession law decides who inherits, the typical order of priority, and what happens if no eligible relatives can be found.
Read the guide →Joint Bank Accounts After Death: What Happens Next
What happens to a joint bank account when one owner dies — how rights of survivorship works, the rarer tenants-in-common exception, and what to tell the bank.
Read the guide →Retirement Account Beneficiary Rules for Executors
What an executor needs to know about retirement account beneficiaries: why the designation on file overrides the will, spousal consent requirements, per stirpes designations, and what happens with no beneficiary named.
Read the guide →Small Estate Affidavit: When You Can Skip Probate
What a small estate affidavit is, when an estate qualifies to skip full probate, and how the process works — plus why the dollar threshold varies so much by state.
Read the guide →Trust vs. Will: What's the Difference for Executors?
How a trust and a will actually differ for estate administration: executor vs. trustee roles, why only trust avoids probate, and the catch that can pull trust assets back into probate anyway.
Read the guide →What Happens to a 401(k) or IRA When Someone Dies
How inherited 401(k)s and IRAs are distributed: why the named beneficiary controls the account regardless of the will, spousal rollover options, and the SECURE Act's 10-year rule for other beneficiaries.
Read the guide →What Happens to a Mortgage When the Homeowner Dies
Why a mortgage doesn't have to be paid off immediately when the homeowner dies, how the Garn-St. Germain Act protects heirs who inherit the home, and what heirs need to do to keep the loan current.
Read the guide →What Happens to Debt When Someone Dies?
Who actually pays a deceased person's debt: how it's settled from the estate, when family members can become personally liable, and what happens when the estate can't cover it all.
Read the guide →What Is Probate and How Long Does It Take?
A plain-language explanation of probate: what the court process actually does, which assets skip it entirely, typical timelines, and what makes probate take longer.
Read the guide →What to Do With Inherited Real Estate
Inheriting a house or land: how title actually transfers, whether probate is required, what stepped-up basis means for taxes, and the keep-sell-rent decision — including what happens to an existing mortgage or tenant.
Read the guide →Want this personalized to your estate?
Estate Assist reads the estate's actual documents and builds a checklist specific to the accounts, policies, and property involved — not a generic list.
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