Business affairs must be wound up: what if a writer has outstanding invoices and something happens? Most executors won’t know to pursue those invoices, but they are a necessity to settling a literary estate.

In some ways it seems like the value of literary estates are likely to be a lot less now than they were 100 years ago. The ease of publishing and sheer volume of what is being written seems lower the value of all but the finest works.

However, coming up with a plan and process now to make things easier years down the road is very wise. A few years ago I sat down with my wife and recorded all the numbers anyone would need if something bad happened to us. It included life insurance policies, credit cards to cancel, retirement accounts, etc. It didn’t take too long, but if something were to happen it would save people days and weeks of time trying to dig through everything.