Being an Executor Changed My Perspective
The following reflects themes and experiences shared across thousands of Nokbox customer reviews. Names and specific details are illustrative.
I never planned to become an executor. Like most people who agree to take on the role, I said yes because it seemed like the right thing to do — and because I assumed it would mostly involve paperwork. A few signatures, a meeting with an attorney, a few phone calls to the right institutions. I figured it would take a few weeks.
I was wrong about almost everything.
What I discovered almost immediately is that being an executor isn't primarily a legal job. The legal process turned out to be the straightforward part — there were attorneys, forms, timelines, procedures. What consumed the most time, by a significant margin, was simply trying to find things. Which bank accounts were active. Whether there was a safe deposit box and where the key was. Which bills were on autopay and from which account. Whether a certain insurance policy was still in force or had lapsed years ago. What the passwords were.
Some of this information was easy to find. Some of it took weeks. And some of it seemed to exist only in the memory of the person who was no longer there to explain it.
The details that surprised me most weren't the obvious ones. Everyone knows to look for the will and the bank accounts. What I hadn't anticipated was how much time went into the smaller things — subscription services nobody had canceled, a storage unit whose existence we only discovered because of a charge on a bank statement, vehicle titles that took three weeks to locate, utility accounts that kept running because nobody knew who to call to shut them off. These details feel minor until you're the one responsible for resolving them, under a timeline, while also managing everything else that comes with settling an estate.
At some point during the process — I think it was about six weeks in, sitting at a table covered in files and printouts and sticky notes — I stopped thinking about the estate I was settling and started thinking about my own household. Would my family know where everything was? Would they know who to call? Would they know which accounts existed, how to access them, which bills needed attention?
The honest answer was probably not. Not because I'd been careless, but because so much of how our household functioned existed only in my head. I knew where the insurance policies were. I knew which investment accounts we had and where they were held. I knew the passwords. I knew the name of our attorney. None of that was written down anywhere that someone else could find and follow without me there to explain it.
Knowing something exists and knowing where to find it are two very different things. I learned that the hard way over several months of searching through someone else's life. I didn't want my family to have to do the same thing through mine.
What I tell people now, when they mention they have a will: that's a real foundation and you should have one. But a will tells people who gets what. It doesn't tell them where things are, how things work, who to call, or what to do first. Those answers matter just as much — sometimes more — in the first days and weeks after a loss.
Before serving as an executor, I thought of organization as a convenience. After, I understood it as something closer to consideration. Every piece of information you organize now is one less thing your family has to search for during one of the hardest stretches of their lives. That's not a small thing. It's actually one of the more meaningful things you can do for the people you love.
Getting a Nokbox was the first thing I did when the estate was finally closed.
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