If you've spent any time wondering "wait, isn't this what I hired the attorney for?", here's the honest answer that most attorneys won't say out loud.
Your attorney handles the court process. Filing the petition. Preparing legal documents. Showing up to hearings. Drafting the final accounting. That's their actual job, and a good one will do it well. That's roughly 15% of being an executor.
The other 85% is project management:
It's running an 18-month operation that you didn't sign up for, didn't get trained for, and aren't being paid for.
The Florida Executor Playbook is the operating manual for that operation.
Being named executor felt like an honor.
Then the paperwork started.
Now you're sitting with a folder full of documents you don't fully understand. You've talked to a probate attorney, maybe even hired one, and you're paying them a few hundred dollars an hour to handle the legal side. That part feels covered, more or less.
What doesn't feel covered: everything else.
The mail. Nobody told you you'd be responsible for forwarding your dad's mail.
The vacant house. You'd need to figure out how to keep the homeowner's insurance from lapsing.
The siblings. You'd have to draft the email explaining why you can't distribute money yet, and why the answer is the same thing you said two months ago.
Form 1041. There's an entire tax return you'd never heard of until last Tuesday.
Your attorney didn't mention most of this. The day-to-day operations of being an executor are all you. And the calls, the questions, the family text threads, the late-night Googling, the bills arriving in someone else's name: they keep coming whether you have a plan or not.
This is the Playbook for the part of probate nobody handed you a guide for.
What the executor job actually involves, and exactly what the Playbook covers. Sound on if you can; it works either way.
This isn't a blog post stretched into a PDF. It's a structured operating manual, organized by milestone, written for the person actually doing the executor job. Here's the actual table of contents from the current edition:
82 pages walking through every phase of Florida probate from your appointment through final discharge. Organized by milestone, not by arbitrary day-count, so it accommodates whatever pace your specific case moves at. Each task tells you: what to do, when to do it, who else needs to be involved, what the attorney will handle vs. what's on you, and the specific Florida-law pitfalls most first-time PRs trip over.
Covers Formal Administration (the default), with a clear decision flowchart for when Summary Administration might apply instead. Most PRs don't know the threshold exists and accidentally file the longer, more expensive version.
This is the feature most buyers tell us made the whole Playbook worth it.
You're about to send a lot of difficult emails to your siblings, aunts, cousins, and ex-stepmother. The kind where any word choice could spark a six-month argument. We wrote the templates so you don't have to write them at 11pm.
15+ ready-to-send templates covering every conversation you're about to have:
Each template includes coaching notes on when to send, how to personalize, and what to leave out.
Most buyers tell us that after sending the first proactive monthly update, the volume of "what's going on?" texts dropped by 70%+.
An interactive Google Sheet. You enter the date your Letters Testamentary were issued. The sheet calculates every downstream milestone: creditor notice publication, inventory due date, the deceased's final 1040, the estate's 1041, distribution waiting periods, property tax cycles, target discharge date.
You glance at it once a week and you know what's coming. Nothing surprises you. Nothing slips because nobody reminded you it was due.
A one-page printable visual of everything an executor is responsible for, organized by phase. Stick it on the fridge. When your aunt calls and asks why you haven't "just sold the house already," point her at the chart.
60+ probate terms defined in language a normal person can understand, with Florida-specific notes where relevant. Fiduciary duty. Letters Testamentary. Pretermitted heir. Per stirpes. Curtesy. Devisee. Ancillary administration. The vocabulary that makes you feel stupid every time it comes up in an attorney meeting, explained once, clearly, so you can stop pretending you know what it means.
An interactive Google Sheet for cataloging everything your loved one owned: furniture, jewelry, vehicles, collectibles, the contents of the storage unit. For each item: photo upload, condition, estimated value, intended disposition (keep / sell / donate / distribute to specific heir). Exports to a court-ready PDF for your inventory filing.
Most first-time executors don't realize: you can be reimbursed by the estate for the expenses you've been paying out of pocket. Funeral expenses you advanced. Travel to the property. Mileage. Postage on certified mailings. Office supplies. Professional fees you paid before the estate accounts were open.
The tracker captures every reimbursable expense with the documentation you'll need later. Most buyers recover several hundred to several thousand dollars they would have eaten otherwise.
Even with a great attorney, most of the time you spend in their office is them explaining things to you. The Module is a structured way to make those hours count for legal work instead of education:
Most buyers report cutting their attorney bill by 20 to 40% just by being more organized going in.
A short chapter specifically addressing the dual burden of grieving while running an estate. The Playbook is designed to be worked in protected 30 to 60 minute weekly blocks, not constant urgent triage. That structure exists deliberately, so you can do the job competently while still having time and space to actually grieve.
The advice in this chapter is direct: probate runs on bureaucracy's schedule, but grief runs on its own. The Playbook is the structure that makes both possible.
This Playbook is built specifically for Florida probate. Florida has unusual rules (Summary Administration thresholds, constitutional homestead protection, specific creditor notice requirements) that don't translate to other states. We chose to go deep on one state rather than shallow on fifty.
If your case is being filed in any state other than Florida, don't buy this Playbook. Email us at [email protected] and we'll let you know when your state version is ready. Texas, California, and several other high-volume states are in development. If you want, we'll refund any accidental purchase the same day.
Florida probate rules change. Statutes get amended. Filing fees get adjusted. Court rules evolve.
If anything material changes in Florida law that affects executor work, you'll get an email and an updated Playbook within 30 days. That's included with your purchase for the first 12 months.
One hour with a Florida probate attorney runs $300 to $600. Every meeting where you arrive without a clear plan and have to ask "so what should I be doing this month?" is a meeting where you're paying $400+ for project management instead of legal work.
The Playbook eliminates 6 to 12 hours of that "what am I supposed to do?" attorney time over the life of the case. Most buyers tell us they made the cost back at their next attorney meeting alone, by arriving organized, with specific questions, and using the hour for legal work.
But more than the dollar math, the Playbook saves you the thing you actually don't have: time. The hours you would have spent Googling at 11pm, the weekend you would have spent re-organizing paperwork because nobody told you the first system was wrong, the calls you'd have made to your attorney to ask things this document already explains.
For $97 you trade about 80 hours of confused first-time-executor time for the equivalent of an experienced executor walking beside you for the next 18 months.
The Playbook was reviewed for Florida probate legal accuracy by Evan Miller, Esq., Florida Bar No. 112646, a Florida-licensed probate attorney, including the law changes effective July 1, 2026. The review was limited to the Playbook.
If it doesn't save you at least 10 hours or pay for itself in legal fees, email us. Approved within 24 hours. No proving you tried it.
Florida statutes change. If anything material to executor work changes, you get a revised Playbook by email within 30 days. Included.
Questions before or after you buy go to [email protected]. A real person replies within 4 business hours. No chatbots.
Open the Playbook. Start using the templates. If within 30 days you don't think the Playbook saved you at least 10 hours or paid for itself in legal fees you didn't have to spend, email us. We refund you. No friction, no proving you tried it, no asking you to explain why. Just a refund.
Approved within 24 hours. We've never fought a refund and we don't plan to start.
This Playbook is not legal advice.
It's operational guidance: the project management, organization, and practical knowledge you need to run the executor role competently. For specific legal questions about your estate, your attorney is the right resource. The Playbook makes those conversations more productive; it doesn't replace them.
We are not a law firm. We are a team that has spent years inside the probate process from every angle, as data providers to attorneys, as advisors to families, as observers of what works and what doesn't. The Playbook is the distillation of that experience, written for the person actually doing the executor job.
Most of our buyers do. Your attorney handles the court process: filings, hearings, legal documents. That's about 15% of what an executor does over 12 to 18 months. The Playbook is built for the other 85%: inventory, beneficiary communication, vendor coordination, property management, tax filings, family conflict management.
Show it to your attorney. Most probate attorneys are quietly thrilled when their clients arrive organized. Several attorneys we've spoken with have asked us about referring it to all of their clients. If your attorney pushes back on you using a tool that makes you more organized, that tells you something about your attorney.
EstateExec is accounting software. It tracks transactions and generates court-ready financial reports. It's great at that.
The Playbook is operational workflow. It tells you what to do, when, and in what order. Many of our buyers use both; they're different jobs.
The individual pieces of information aren't proprietary. Florida statutes are public. The list of executor duties is generally available. You could absolutely assemble what's in the Playbook from free sources, over the course of maybe 30 to 50 hours of focused research, with no guarantee you've captured everything that matters.
That's the trade you're making. The Playbook is the work already done.
Our team has spent more than five years working inside the probate process, building data and tools used by probate professionals across the country. We are not attorneys; we are operators who know this category deeply because we've worked alongside thousands of cases.
Fiduciary duty is a fancy term for: every decision you make has to be in the best interests of the estate and the beneficiaries, not in your own interests. Practically, that means a few things:
The Playbook walks through what this looks like in concrete weekly actions, so you don't have to keep guessing whether you're doing it right.
Yes. This is one of the most common first-week situations, and it's allowed in every state with proper documentation. The general rule is to track every dollar from day one, even before you have estate accounts set up. Don't worry about formality in the moment; save receipts and note what each one was for.
The Playbook includes an Executor Reimbursement Tracker that captures the specific receipts, dates, purposes, and notes you'll need to be properly reimbursed from the estate later.
This is the most underestimated part of the executor role, and the most universal experience among first-time executors.
The Playbook structures the work into focused weekly blocks, typically 30 to 60 minutes once a week, instead of treating it as constant urgent triage. That structure exists specifically so you can do the job competently while still having time and space to actually grieve.
Many people use the Playbook itself as a way to enforce that boundary on themselves. The work has to happen. It doesn't have to consume every waking hour.
Then the Playbook saved you 5 months of confusion instead of 18. Same value, faster timeline. The 12 months of updates still apply, and the Playbook is yours forever.
Yes. Your purchase covers everyone working on this one estate. Forward it freely to family, co-executors, or your attorney. We trust you to use it appropriately.
You get an email within 2 minutes of checkout with everything: the Florida Executor Playbook PDF, the link to the interactive Milestone Tracker and Personal Property Inventory sheets, and the templates pack. You also get a follow-up email a week later asking how you're doing and whether you have questions a real human can help with.
If you ever have a question about the Playbook itself, email [email protected] and a real person will reply within 4 business hours.
You're going to spend the next 12 to 18 months running this estate. Your attorney will handle a small but important slice of that. You'll handle everything else, and you'll do it while working a regular job, while dealing with grief, while fielding texts from family members, while trying to live the rest of your life.
You can run it the way most first-time executors run it. Reactive. Confused most weeks. Asking your attorney "what should I be doing this month?" at $400 an hour. Discovering the Form 1041 in March when it should have been filed in February. Losing your weekend trying to re-organize paperwork because nobody told you the first system was wrong.
Or you can open the Playbook tonight, read the first-7-days chapter, and have the full 18-month map in front of you tomorrow morning.
$97. One time. Refundable for 30 days.
The Beneficiary Communication Toolkit is the part of the Playbook most buyers email us about. They write to tell us their brother stopped texting them daily after they started sending the monthly update. They write to tell us their sister cried after the asset valuation dispute response did its job. They write to tell us they wish they'd had it six months earlier.
If you take only one thing from this page: the conversations with your beneficiaries over the next year are going to be harder than you think. Having the words already written, ready to send, is the difference between a manageable executor experience and a year of family conflict.
That alone is worth $97.