Archiving is a status, not a discharge

Archiving is an administrative status in the app. The file then becomes read-only. Staff can still read the record. They no longer work on as if it were a running workspace. That status is not an end of liability. It is also not a discharge by the heirs. No one is discharged because a staff member sets the file to archived. A discharge is a declaration by those who give it, on a document you can point to. If that document is missing, you do not write that the matter has been settled. You write that the office has closed the file administratively, and you show what that sentence does and does not mean.

Before you archive, you write down what is still open. A house abroad without a local deed, a gift of which the date is missing, a letter that has remained a draft, a question that lies with the notary. Those open points should remain readable in the file, not in a colleague's head. Put them as a task or as a closing line, in words someone else can follow. If a point has been left open on purpose, it says why. An empty field with an open task is more honest than an archive status that pretends completeness. Heirs see those open points only if the matching layer is on. Internal reservations remain internal notes.

In the last letter, if you send one, do not say that all claims have lapsed. Say what you have done and what is still open. Sending that letter is a task, not a consequence of the archive status. The portal does not close of itself for every layer because the file becomes read-only. Decide per layer whether heirs may still see what is there. A layer with amounts that never got a source ought to be off before you treat the file as finished. Staff keep the workspace in view until the moment of archiving. After that the status is the reading state. The paper documents remain the source, not the status flag.

On archiving, Ervazo sets the administrative status to read-only and leaves the record standing as it was at that moment. Ervazo records and calculates as a worksheet. The status changes no debt, no share and no liability. That is not advice. It files nothing and it pays nothing. The program gives no discharge on behalf of the heirs and it does not declare an open item settled after all. What you wrote down as open before the archiving remains readable. The worksheet does not calculate an end to the matter because the status has been set. Closing in the app is an act of the office. The statute and the deeds stay outside that button.