Helping Your Personal Representative Help Your Estate

If you have taken the time and effort to create a comprehensive estate plan, you must be sure that you choose an executor who will be able to not only carry out your wishes, but who will also be able to manage your estate without problems. While you cannot be there to supervise the management of your estate, you can help your executor, also called a personal representative, get off on the right foot by taking preparatory actions now.

Organize Documents

You’ve gone through all the trouble to create an estate plan, so why leave it up to your executor to scrounge around searching for the relevant documents? One of the simplest things you can do to help the executor perform his or her job is to collect your estate planning documents and place them in a secure location. Then all you have to do is tell your executor where they are so, when the time comes, he or she can quickly locate them.

Leave a Guide

Your executor will have to manage your property after you are gone, but that doesn’t mean he or she knows everything there is to know about it. If, for example, you have a vacation home that requires certain types of care, you may want to leave your executor a guide on how to properly care for the property. You can also leave instructions on how to deal with digital properties, online accounts and other special possessions.