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 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 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 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 →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 →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 →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 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 →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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