Distributing and closing

The distribution plan is the answer to "who gets what". You work asset by asset, assigning each one's shares to beneficiaries until every probate asset is fully allocated — meaning each asset's shares total 100%. Heirwise flags any asset that does not, and the beneficiary-shares check will not pass until they all do.

Cash or in-kind

Each distribution is one of two kinds, and the distinction is practical rather than bookkeeping.

Cash

The beneficiary receives money. Either the asset was sold and they get proceeds, or their share is paid from the estate's cash.

In-kind

The beneficiary receives the asset itself, in its original form. The car goes to the daughter as the car; the shares transfer as shares.

This connects directly to the liquidation status you set on each asset. Something marked retain in-kind is going to a beneficiary as-is; something liquidated became cash to be distributed. An asset still marked pending sale has an unresolved outcome, which is why that status blocks the readiness check.

Cash shares

Alongside per-asset allocations, a beneficiary can hold a percentage share of the estate's general cash. This handles the common will structure where specific items go to specific people and the remainder is split by percentage, without you having to model the residue as a pseudo-asset.

Getting it right

• Work from the will, not from memory or from what the family has agreed verbally.
• Watch for beneficiaries who predeceased the decedent, or gifts of items the estate no longer owns. Both change the arithmetic and both are attorney questions.
• Check the tax consequences before locking. Pennsylvania inheritance tax rates depend on each beneficiary's relationship to the decedent, so two people receiving equal value do not necessarily net equal amounts.
• Confirm every beneficiary's identity and contact details are recorded, since they appear on the schedule and on the Receipt and Release forms.

When the plan is right, you generate the Final Distribution Schedule. This is the definitive per-beneficiary statement of what each person receives, and it's the document you work from when actually distributing.

Generating it does two things at once: it locks the plan and produces the PDF. That pairing is deliberate — a locked plan and a schedule PDF that disagreed would be worse than either alone. It also completes the distribution-plan-reviewed check in the same action.

What locking means

The locked plan is the reviewed, final allocation. Beneficiaries cannot see their distribution in the portal until the plan is locked — one of the three conditions on that gate — so locking is also the moment the numbers become visible to them.

It isn't irreversible. If something genuinely must change, the plan can be unlocked, and both the lock and the unlock are recorded with who did it and when. But treat unlocking as a real decision rather than routine, especially once beneficiaries have seen the figures.

A Receipt and Release is the document each beneficiary signs to acknowledge they received their full distribution and to release you, the executor, from further liability for how you handled the estate. Short of a formal Orphans' Court audit, it is your primary protection.

The mechanics are simple: one form per beneficiary, signed when they receive their distribution, and kept on file. It's the significance that's easy to underrate.

What's usually in one

• An acknowledgement that the beneficiary received their distribution in full.
• A release of you from further liability for your administration of the estate.
• Refunding and indemnification language — the beneficiary agrees to return funds if a later claim against the estate requires it.

Collect every one before you close the estate. A distribution made without a signed release leaves you exposed on exactly the transaction you most want covered — and chasing a signature from someone who has already been paid is markedly harder than getting it at the time.

Closing is a sequence, and the order matters. Doing these out of order creates problems that are tedious to reverse.

1. 1Assemble each beneficiary's packet — their payment or asset transfer, their Receipt and Release to sign, and supporting paperwork including their portion of the distribution schedule and any transfer or title documents.
2. 2Execute the distributions and collect every signed Receipt and Release.
3. 3File the final accounting with the court and formally close the estate.
4. 4Wait for every payment to actually clear — not merely to have been issued.
5. 5Close the estate bank account.
6. 6Download the complete records archive for your permanent files.

The records archive

The final task produces a single ZIP containing a financials workbook — assets, debts, expenses, and the final distribution breakdown — alongside every document you uploaded and every PDF Heirwise generated.

Download it and store it somewhere durable. You may be asked to account for your administration years after closing, and this archive is that account in one file. It is much easier to keep a copy now than to reconstruct the estate later.