About

The executor who built the calendar he needed

ExecutorPilot exists because settling an estate is a job nobody trains you for — and the first quote to have it done for you is usually five figures.

Why this site exists

I was named executor of a family estate in New Jersey with no legal background and no idea where to start. The first attorney I called quoted $18,000 minimum — money that would have come straight out of what the family was set to inherit.

So I did it myself: the county Surrogate, Letters Testamentary, the inheritance tax return, the creditor claim window, and selling the estate's real estate. I met every deadline and kept a clean record the whole way, from my kitchen table, without taking a day off work.

What I didn't expect was that hiring help wouldn't settle the question. Over the course of the estate, professionals I'd engaged went quiet — a CPA who stopped returning messages, an engagement that simply ended — while the deadlines kept arriving on schedule. That is the part nobody warns you about: the responsibility never transfers. You can pay for advice, and you should where judgment is genuinely required, but the calendar belongs to the executor no matter who else is involved. The state's clock does not pause because your accountant is busy.

So I learned to work the way the process is actually designed to be worked: the official instructions as the source of truth, the state's own help line as a free validator, and a written record of every date and dollar. That is what ExecutorPilot is — not a replacement for a lawyer, but the system that makes you the most organized client your professionals have ever had, and keeps you on schedule in the stretches when nobody answers the phone.

What I learned is the thing this whole site is built on: settling a routine estate is not mainly a legal job — it's an administrative one. It's a sequence of dates. Nobody hands the executor a calendar, so a deadline slips quietly and an estate stalls for months. The hard part usually isn't legal complexity. It's that no one tells you what's due, or when.

Who I am

Jordan Sanders — founder of ExecutorPilot and author of the Executor's Handbook series for New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. A former New Jersey resident, now based in the Greater Philadelphia area. Before this I spent 18 years building and running ground transportation companies — operations, logistics, dispatch, and customer service at scale — and hold a business administration degree from Arcadia University. Different industry, same instinct: find the process that keeps breaking, then build the system that fixes it.

I am not an attorney, a paralegal, an accountant, or a fiduciary, and I don't want to be mistaken for one. What I have is firsthand experience doing this job in the real world, and a habit of writing down how a process actually works.

What ExecutorPilot is — and what it isn't

ExecutorPilot is a compliance calendar and plain-English resource for executors and administrators in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland:

• A free deadline calculator that maps every filing date from the date of death
• Plain-English guides to the process, inheritance tax, creditor claims, and selling estate property
• Optional state compliance kits with editable letters, trackers, and a records system built to feed a court accounting
• The Executor's Handbook series in paperback and Kindle, for people who'd rather read it on the kitchen table than on a screen: New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland

It is not a law firm and it does not give legal advice. It won't evaluate your estate, tell you what you must do, or replace a lawyer where one is genuinely needed. In fact a good part of its job is the opposite: every kit opens with a red-flag list of the situations — a contested will, an insolvent estate, litigation, a beneficiary dispute — where the honest answer is call an attorney in your state. Dates and processes are stated as facts; judgment calls are flagged as judgment calls.

How the information is kept accurate

Every state-specific figure on this site — rates, exemptions, deadlines, form names — traces to that state's official source: the New Jersey Division of Taxation, the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue, the Maryland Register of Wills and Comptroller, and the states' own statutes. Those official pages are monitored for changes, and when a rule moves, the guides, calculators, and kits are updated together rather than one at a time. Accuracy is the product; a stale deadline is worse than no deadline.

That said, rules vary by county and change over time. Nothing here replaces confirming your own dates with your county probate office or a licensed professional.

For journalists and editors

I write the Executor's Handbook series, plain-English guides to settling an estate in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, available in paperback and Kindle.

I'm available to talk about probate from the executor's side of the table — what the process actually involves, where families get stuck, and why the paperwork burden falls hardest on the people least able to afford counsel. I speak from having done it, not as a legal expert, and I'll say so plainly in any interview.

Reach me at jordan@executorpilot.com, or connect on LinkedIn.