So You're the Executor: a Plain-English Guide to Settling an Estate

Being named executor is a compliment wrapped around a part-time job: settling even a tidy estate takes months of paperwork, and the role carries real legal duties, and real personal liability for shortcuts. The work is entirely manageable with a sequence and the right help. Here is the Georgia version, in the order the tasks actually arrive.

Weeks One to Four: Secure and File

Immediate duties: obtain 10-15 certified death certificates (everyone wants an original), secure the home, vehicles, and valuables, keep insurance in force (vacant-home riders matter), forward mail, and locate the original will. Then open probate with the county probate court, in Georgia, typically petitioning for letters testamentary as the named executor; a well-drafted will relieving bond and inventory simplifies everything. Once appointed, get the estate's tax ID (EIN), open an estate bank account, and route every incoming and outgoing dollar through it, commingling with personal funds is the cardinal sin of executorship.

Months One to Six: Inventory, Notify, and Manage

Build the asset and debt inventory: statements, deeds, titles, digital accounts, business interests, and safe-deposit boxes, this is where a decedent's organized folder, or its absence, sets the difficulty level. Publish and send creditor notices per Georgia procedure (which starts claim windows running), notify Social Security, insurers, and financial institutions, and file claims for life insurance and benefits, note that beneficiary-designated assets (retirement accounts, insurance, TOD accounts) pass outside your administration directly to their beneficiaries; your job is the probate estate. Manage assets prudently meanwhile: you are a fiduciary, and heirs can challenge losses from neglect or freelance investing.

The Money Sequence: Debts, Taxes, Then Heirs

Pay in legal priority order: administration costs, funeral expenses, taxes, secured and unsecured creditors, then beneficiaries, last, always last. An executor who distributes early and then meets a tax bill or valid claim can owe the difference personally. Taxes to handle: the decedent's final income return, estate income tax returns (Form 1041) if the estate earns during administration, and a federal estate tax return only above the exemption (or to elect portability for a surviving spouse, frequently worth filing even when no tax is due). A CPA experienced with estates earns their fee here; so does documenting every decision, receipt, and communication for heirs and the court.

Distribution and the Human Layer

Distribute per the will's terms with signed receipts and releases; for trusts, coordinate with the successor trustee; for beneficiaries' own planning, a warm hand-off to advisors prevents the classic post-inheritance mistakes. The soft skills decide how the family remembers you: communicate proactively (silence breeds suspicion), treat equal heirs with visible equality, and let the personal-property distribution, the source of most estate fights, follow a fair process (rotating picks, appraisals for big items). Executor compensation is allowed in Georgia; family executors often waive it, but the option matters for burdensome estates. And when the estate is complex, contested, or just heavy, delegating to professionals is not failure, it is the fiduciary standard working; our estate services regularly support executors through exactly this.

Tony Colunga · Founder, Attend Wealth

Tony leads Attend Wealth, a fee-based wealth management firm in Atlanta serving professionals, families, and business owners. Advisory services are held to a fiduciary standard. More about Attend