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.

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.