The Estate Triage
When a parent dies or loses capacity. Before, ideally.
- I run four practices. My business model is that I refuse to specialise.· A lawyer who builds software, a producer who reads Friston, a writer with two bar memberships. The orthodoxy says pick one. The numbers say something else.
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- The Off-Label Brief· Bring your homework to the consult. Don't bring an argument.
markdown# Estate Inventory · [decedent] **Last refreshed**: [date] **Status**: Pre-grant ## Assets surfaced | Asset | Institution | Last known balance | Evidence | Action | |-------|-------------|---------------------|----------|--------| | Savings | Maybank | RM 41,200 (2024 stmt) | Statement, KWSP file | Petition | | EPF/KWSP | KWSP | RM 188k (i-Akaun) | i-Akaun screenshot | Form KWSP 9H/9G | | Insurance | AIA | TBD | Policy doc | Beneficiary check | | Property | LHDN | Title held | Hakmilik | Caveat lodged | | Crypto | self-custody | unknown | Seed phrase missing | TODO | ## Petition status - [ ] Death certificate certified true copy ×4 - [ ] List of next-of-kin (s.6 PAA 1959) - [ ] Affidavit of administration - [ ] Letter to Amanah Raya filed - [x] Title search at Land Office complete
- probate vs letters of administration
- Distribution Act 1958 (MY, non-Muslim estates)
- faraid distribution (MY, Muslim estates)
- the Amanah Raya path for small estates
- Probate and Administration Act 1959
- banking-discovery practice
- digital-asset inheritance gap
- cross-border estate complications
If a name is unfamiliar, that's the gap. The list is the curriculum.
- 01
Build the inventory before anything is needed. Even one row beats starting from zero on day zero.
- 02
Pull bank statements via written request under POA or, post-death, via the s.21 PAA 1959 disclosure path.
- 03
For Muslim estates: compute faraid distribution upfront with Claude as calculator. The arithmetic is unforgiving and the family will check it.
- 04
For non-Muslim estates: walk through Distribution Act 1958 ss.6-7 by family configuration. Spouse, issue, parents, siblings; the shares change with each combination.
- 05
Identify the appropriate path: Amanah Raya for small estates (≤ RM 600k movable, no real property); Land Office for landed; High Court for the rest.
- 06
Track every digital asset separately. Cloud accounts, password managers, crypto wallets. Most jurisdictions have not legislated this; you are the legislation.
- 07
Run the inventory through an adversarial pass: "What asset would surface in 6 months that we missed?" The answer is almost always an old insurance policy or a sibling claim.
Eighty percent of people are forced to learn probate during the worst week of their lives. The court does not relax timelines for grief. Building the inventory ahead of time turns an emergency project into an admin task. AI is the right tool for the inventory because it is patient with the arithmetic, ruthless about missing fields, and good at the cross-questions you would not think to ask in the moment.