A big challenge to an Executor in this day and age is the use of email for business transactions. I learned after serving as Personal Representative that the large email providers such as yahoo mail
do not honor any type of Probate appointment to reset the decedent's
email password and may even delete the account if they learn of the death.
Fortunately, the way that I had setup Dad's email in prior years was that I gave him an email address from a domain that belongs to us. I had an email forwarding service forward the mail to his yahoo account.
In this case I was able to redirect where email was sent to after his death (assuming that it was not sent directly to @yahoo.com, but rather @ourdomain.com) to a mail account that I had access to.
I didn't plan this up front, but it was a byproduct of my general feeling that it is a bad idea to use and widely publish an email address with a domain that you do not directly control.
This is likely a big effort to change after the fact after an email address is widely published, but for somebody setting up a new email address then this may make sense.
-gauss
p.s. Having a Military discharge dd214 form and SS number readily available was useful for scheduling the final interment at the Military National Cemetery and was one of the high priority items for us to get to our funeral director in order to establish the schedule for everything (ie publish obit, schedule church etc. etc.)
p.p.s "Avoiding probate" IMHO is entirely overblown fear-induced concept likely attributable to the Living Trust industry. I had the option of attempting a low-value estate summary proceedings based on the low value equity in the Real Estate involved (< $50,000) but elected instead for the "normal" (informal unsupervised) probate to avoid any cloud of title when the property is later disposed of. Don't let an irrational fear of probate wag the estate planning dog.