Estate and trust accounting is a niche defined by its stakes, its complexity, and its documentation requirements. A fiduciary accounting — the formal record of all assets received, investment transactions, income collected, expenses paid, and distributions made during the administration of a trust or estate — must be accurate enough to survive court scrutiny, beneficiary challenges, and probate court review. An estate tax return for a taxable estate involves valuing every asset, identifying every deduction, and reporting every prior gift made during the decedent's lifetime.
Both engagements are heavily administrative at the coordination level. Virtual assistants are helping estate and trust accounting firms manage that coordination without adding to the CPA's or attorney's plate.
Coordinating Fiduciary Accountings
A fiduciary accounting covers every financial event in the administration period: assets marshaled at the date of funding or death, subsequent purchases and sales, dividends and interest collected, expenses paid (including fiduciary fees, legal fees, and accountant fees), and distributions to beneficiaries. For a trust with an active investment portfolio and multi-year administration, that accounting can cover hundreds of transactions across dozens of asset classes.
The coordination work starts with data collection. A virtual assistant contacts each financial institution, brokerage firm, and custodian holding trust assets to request statements covering the relevant administration period. When assets include real property, closely held business interests, or promissory notes, the VA coordinates with appraisers, business valuation firms, and attorneys to obtain the documentation needed to value and describe those assets.
Transaction data from brokerage statements is organized chronologically in the firm's trust accounting software — Thomson Reuters Trust Accountant, HowardSoft, or custom spreadsheet systems — with each transaction categorized as principal or income according to the Uniform Principal and Income Act provisions applicable in the trust's governing state. The VA flags unusual items and items requiring fiduciary judgment for the CPA's review before the draft accounting is produced.
According to the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel, fiduciary litigation — disputes over accounting accuracy, allocation of receipts and disbursements, and trustee conduct — accounted for 23 percent of all trust and estate disputes in 2024. Accurate, well-documented accountings are the first line of defense.
Estate Tax Return Support
Form 706 — the United States Estate (and Generation-Skipping Transfer) Tax Return — is due nine months after the date of death, with a six-month extension available. For a taxable estate, the return must report the fair market value of every asset the decedent owned at death, including real property, financial accounts, business interests, retirement accounts, life insurance proceeds includable in the estate, and any prior taxable gifts.
Supporting that return requires assembling date-of-death account statements for every financial account, preliminary or final appraisals for real property and business interests, life insurance policy documents, and a complete gift history from prior gift tax returns. This documentation gathering exercise is entirely administrative.
A virtual assistant assigned to Form 706 support begins at engagement intake by building the document checklist based on the estate inventory provided by the executor. The VA contacts each financial institution for date-of-death statements, coordinates with real property appraisers and business valuation firms on engagement timelines, and requests prior-year gift tax returns from the decedent's prior tax preparer when available from IRS records.
As documents arrive, the VA logs receipt in the engagement tracking system, files them in the appropriate section of the workpaper binder, and updates the outstanding items list. The CPA receives a complete documentation package organized by Form 706 schedule, ready for value entry and technical review.
Managing Multi-Party Engagements
Estate and trust matters involve more parties than most accounting engagements: the personal representative or trustee, multiple beneficiaries, estate planning attorneys, probate courts, and often successor trustees or co-trustees. Communication coordination across all of these parties — tracking who has been notified of what, when documents were sent and received, and what responses are pending — is a substantial administrative task.
A virtual assistant maintains the communication log for each estate or trust engagement, documents every correspondence with every party, and tracks action items through to completion. In a practice managing 30 or 40 active estate administrations simultaneously, that log is the difference between organized, defensible administration and missed deadlines and disputed communications.
Stealth Agents provides virtual assistants trained in estate and trust administration workflows, fiduciary accounting coordination, and estate tax return support for CPA firms and fiduciary accounting practices.
Sources
- American College of Trust and Estate Counsel, "2024 Fiduciary Litigation Survey," 2024
- Internal Revenue Service, "Instructions for Form 706," Publication, 2024
- Uniform Law Commission, "Uniform Fiduciary Income and Principal Act," 2018 (adopted in multiple states through 2024)