Part V
Getting documents out
The forms Heirwise fills, the difference between a filled form and an attorney information packet, the missing-field gate, renunciations, and every way to get data out.
The forms Heirwise fills
Heirwise fills Pennsylvania probate forms from facts already on file. You never retype the decedent's name, your address, or the case number — each is captured once and flows into every form that needs it, which also means the forms can't contradict each other.
| Form | What it is | When |
|---|---|---|
| RW-02 | Petition for Grant of Letters — the filing that opens the estate and gets you appointed. | End of Phase 1 |
| RW-06 | Renunciation — signed by an heir declining to serve as executor. One form per person. | Phase 1, if needed |
| RW-07 | Notice to beneficiaries under Rule 10.5 — tells heirs the estate has been opened. | Phase 2 |
| RW-08 | Certification of notice under Rule 10.8 — your proof to the court that you sent the Rule 10.5 notices. | Phase 2 |
Filling works against the real PDF forms rather than recreating them, so what you print is the form the county expects, with your data in the actual fields.
Read it before you file
Generating a form downloads it rather than opening a preview, so open the file and read it before you print or file anything. Heirwise gets the mechanics right — the correct facts in the correct boxes — but you are the one signing and filing, and you are the one who knows if a fact was wrong upstream.
Watch the instructions that accompany each form. Some need notarization, some need certified mail, some need originals rather than copies delivered in person. A correctly filled form filed the wrong way still gets rejected.
Filled forms versus attorney packets
Not everything gets filled. For two documents, Heirwise deliberately assembles an information packet for your attorney to draft from instead of producing something signature-ready.
| Document | What Heirwise gives you |
|---|---|
| RW-09, the estate inventory | A ZIP with the financials workbook and a fixed selection of supporting documents, for your attorney to draft the filed inventory from. Note it does not include bank or brokerage statements, so expect to supply those separately. |
| Family settlement agreement | A ZIP with the estate's financial position and a small set of supporting documents, for your attorney to draft the agreement the beneficiaries will sign. |
The reason for the distinction is risk. A family settlement agreement binds the beneficiaries and releases you from liability — its wording has consequences that a template cannot anticipate. The inventory is a formal statement to the court about what the estate holds, and errors in it are not clerical. Both are places where a generated document would be false confidence.
This is the same reasoning behind Elin refusing legal questions. Where a wrong answer creates real exposure, Heirwise hands you the organized material and points at a professional rather than guessing.
The packets are still useful to hand over. Much of what an attorney would otherwise bill you for on these is reconciling the underlying numbers, and that part is done. Check what's in the ZIP before you send it, though, and add anything your attorney will obviously want.
The missing-information gate
A form can only be filled from facts that exist. If something required is missing, the screen blocks generation rather than letting you produce a document with blanks in it, and tells you which values it still needs.
This is worth appreciating rather than resenting. A petition with an empty field gets rejected at the counter, and you find out after the trip to the courthouse. Catching it beforehand costs a minute.
What to expect
- You attempt to generate a form and it's blocked.
- Heirwise lists what's missing. Expect internal field names rather than plain English — something like "current_renouncer.name" means the name of the person renouncing.
- Open the form's review screen from the same row and fill the gaps there. It won't jump you to the specific field, so work down the list you were shown.
- Fill them in and generate again.
Repeatedly blocked on the same form? The gap is usually upstream — a document you haven't uploaded yet, or a value you haven't confirmed — rather than anything about the form itself. And because the block is applied by the screen rather than by the form, treat a form that generates with blanks in it as a signal to go back and fill the gaps, not as permission to file it.
Some forms also have a review step where you check and adjust the values that will be filled before the document is produced. That's your chance to catch something extracted slightly wrong, and it's faster than regenerating.
Packet assembly
Several filings aren't one document — they're a specific set of documents in a specific order. Heirwise assembles these as packets. The court-facing ones are merged into a single PDF with cover and separator sheets so the bundle is legible to whoever receives it; the attorney information packets are plain ZIP files with no cover sheet.
- The probate petition packet — the petition together with the documents that must accompany it.
- The executor proof packet — short certificate, death certificate, and EIN letter, which is what banks typically ask to see.
- The renunciation packet — one RW-06 per renouncing heir, merged into a single document.
- Attorney information packets for the RW-09 inventory and the family settlement agreement.
Assembly takes a moment because Heirwise is merging real PDFs, so you'll see progress while it works. If a packet can't be assembled it will tell you which item isn't ready rather than producing an incomplete bundle.
Assemble the executor proof packet once and keep copies. You'll present it at every institution the decedent banked with, and each one tends to want its own.
Renunciations
Sometimes someone with a prior claim to serving as executor doesn't want the job. Pennsylvania handles this with a renunciation: they formally decline, which clears the way for you to be appointed.
This comes up more than you'd expect — an older sibling named first who lives out of state, a spouse who doesn't want the burden, co-executors where only one intends to act.
- Add each person who is renouncing.
- Generate the forms. Heirwise produces one RW-06 per person, merged into a single packet.
- Get each one signed by the person renouncing.
- Upload the signed forms back into Heirwise.
- File them with the petition.
A renunciation must be signed by the person actually renouncing. You cannot sign on someone's behalf, and a renunciation is not the same thing as someone simply not showing up.
Getting your data out
Four ways to take information out of Heirwise, for different purposes.
| Export | Format | What it's for |
|---|---|---|
| A single document | Original file | From the vault — the exact file you uploaded. Documents Heirwise generated are downloaded from the task screen that produced them instead. |
| Attorney information packet | ZIP | The financials workbook plus a fixed selection of supporting documents, for the RW-09 inventory or the family settlement agreement. |
| Final Distribution Schedule | The per-beneficiary distribution breakdown. Generating it also locks the plan. | |
| Complete estate records archive | ZIP | A financials workbook, your uploaded documents, and the forms Heirwise generated from its templates. The last task in Phase 3. |
The records archive is the one to remember. It bundles most of the estate into one download — the workbook of assets, debts and expenses, alongside your documents. That's the artifact you keep after the estate closes.
Download the archive before you stop paying attention to the estate, and store it somewhere durable. Executors are expected to account for their administration well after closing. Two gaps to close by hand: the Final Distribution Schedule is downloaded separately and is not in the archive, and the distribution breakdown appears in the workbook only once the plan is finalized. Check the archive against your document list — a file that can't be retrieved is skipped rather than reported.
The financials workbook inside these bundles is built from the same server-side calculation as the on-screen balance sheet, and excludes anything you deleted — so the totals reconcile exactly with what you saw in the app.