Estate Interview & Summary

The Estate Management tab models an estate-planning matter. Alongside the Overview, People & Roles, Documents and Critical Dates sub-tabs, two sub-tabs make the tab genuinely productive: a guided Interview that collects the plan, and a structured Summary of the answers.

The interview is built on Athenty’s reusable questionnaire / client-tasking engine — the estate interview is its first consumer.

Interview

The Interview sub-tab presents a guided, branching questionnaire rather than a flat form. It collects a shared “about you / family / assets / fiduciaries” core once, then reveals document-specific sections based on the answers.

Branching (conditional visibility)

Questions and whole sections appear or hide live as you answer:

• A “Which documents do you want to plan?” multi-select gates the document sections — Will, Power of Attorney for Property, Health-Care Directive, and Power of Attorney for Personal Care.
• Follow-ups unfold only when relevant — for example “Do you have minor children?” → Yes reveals the guardian questions; No hides them.

Visibility is evaluated live in the browser and re-derived authoritatively on the server when answers are saved, so the two never disagree.

People are matter participants

Every question that names a person or entity — executor / estate trustee, attorney for property, attorney for personal care, guardian, beneficiaries, witnesses — uses a participant picker that defaults to the matter’s existing participants. People are never free text; add them on the People & Roles tab first. Each picker shows the suggested role for the question.

When the client fills the interview in the client portal, the picker first lists their own family relationships recorded on their profile — spouse or partner, parents, children, siblings and other family, closest first — and then the people on the matter. Business relationships and opposing parties are never offered, and a client never sees another client’s relatives. If the client picks a relative who isn’t on the matter yet, that person is added to the matter as a third party automatically. Run your usual conflict check on anyone added this way. See Who a client can pick.

This participant-driven picker is a reusable cross-workflow component — the same logic collects parties on other workflows (for example loan parties and underwriting questions).

Structured specific gifts

Specific gifts are a repeatable structured group, not a paragraph. Each gift captures the item / description, an estimated value, and a recipient (a participant), plus smart conditional fields — an alternate recipient that appears only when the gift is flagged “if this person predeceases.” Add and remove gift rows inline.

Document requests

A question can ask for a document, not just an answer (for example “Upload your existing Will”). On the staff surface you link an existing file from the matter Drive; clients will be able to upload directly against the question from the portal in a later phase.

Autosave, due dates, and lifecycle

• Autosave & resume — answers save automatically; you can stop and return later.
• Answers needed by — set a due date on the assignment to drive reminders and follow-ups.
• Lifecycle — Submit locks answers for staff review; Mark reviewed records the review; Reopen unlocks for further edits.

Summary

The Summary sub-tab is a clean, read-only structured view of the captured answers, grouped by section, with people and linked documents rendered inline. It is the substrate that later document-generation phases will consume.

Scope & responsibility

This is an information-gathering tool. It collects information only — it does not give legal advice or produce a legally executed document. The firm (org/user) is responsible for ensuring that any documents prepared from these answers are accurate and legally valid, consistent with Athenty’s role as a processor of the firm’s data.