Handling a sister's complex Florida estate when flying wasn't an option

The logistics alone were daunting. His sister's car had been impounded after her death, and retrieving it required coordinating directly with the Florida police department—not something Michael could manage from home. His Alix Settlement Specialist, Michelle, handled it. She worked with law enforcement, sorted the title transfer, and arranged for someone to drive the car away when the time came. Michael's family never had to make a trip to Florida just to deal with it. He didn't set foot in a DMV.

His sister's estate also included a waterfront property that turned out to need significant repairs before it could be sold: 53 items flagged in the inspection, including structural damage from a prior water leak. There were utility accounts, ongoing carrying costs, and the steady administrative work of keeping an estate in order across state lines. Alix coordinated with a local real estate agent, helped Michael draw from estate funds to cover ongoing expenses, and kept the process moving through obstacles that regularly arise in multistate settlements.

Michael hadn't anticipated how long the process would take (more than a year, as it turned out) or how much he'd need to spend out of pocket to administer the estate before reimbursing himself from estate funds. Those are realities many executors encounter. Alix worked with him to structure reimbursements from his sister's CDs, which helped him manage cash flow without absorbing costs indefinitely.

“I'm happy with the company and I learned a lot from this whole process," Michael said. "If you had told me I'd have been an expert in filling out all this paperwork, I never would have believed it. But here I am doing it, and I'm proud of it."