Do not name a share before the figures are fixed

Do not name a share or an amount to an heir for as long as the debts and the values on the date of death are not there. A house without a source, an account without a statement and a debt that has only been mentioned make every division premature. In that conversation say what is already fixed and what is still open. Name the missing documents by name. A bank statement on the date of death, a statement of the mortgage, a list of open invoices. Anyone who names a share before those documents are there makes an interim position sound like an outcome. The heir remembers the figure. The file then has a promise the estate inventory cannot yet carry.

Debts belong in the same breath as the assets. A balance without the mortgage, the funeral invoice or a private loan is not a share. The reference date must be right as well. The value on the date of death is not today's balance, after invoices have been paid. Keep those two apart when someone asks what they will receive. Say that the current position is a cash snapshot and that the division rests on the date of death. If one of the two is missing, the answer remains: this item is open. A round figure to fill the conversation does not go into the mouth and not into a letter. Silence about an open item is more honest than a figure.

Write the open items on a list you can read out. Per line: what is missing, who requests it, and that the amount stays empty. That list is the answer to the heir, not an estimate. Do not put the list in the portal as a division. The amounts layer stays off until the figures have a source. Staff see the open lines in the workspace, including an internal note if there is doubt about a debt. That doubt does not go outside. If an heir presses, you repeat the open points. You do not fill the gap with a share that sounds pleasant and later has to be put right.

Ervazo stores the open items and the empty amounts beside the documents that already do have a source. Ervazo records and calculates as a worksheet. A sum on that worksheet is only the addition of what you have entered, not a promised share. That is not advice. It files nothing and it pays nothing. The program does not fill an empty field with an assumption and it does not share an amount through the portal for as long as that layer is off. What you may say to an heir remains the list of open items. The worksheet does not calculate further than the sources. A promise does not belong on the screen and not in the letter.