Many readers sounded a similar theme: I better be ready, because it's probably a lot more work and responsibility than I could have imagined.

Patricia Marek, in Woodland Hills, Calif., says an uncle asked her and her older sister to serve as his so called personal representatives when he died.

They agreed. When the time arrived in the fall of 2O05, they combed through his filing cabinets, safe deposit box and other personal items to determine assets and liabilities. Ms. Marek headed off to Florida to deal with the remnants of his life there.

"The amount of time I spent addressing each detail consumed days, nights and weekends for months," Ms. Marek says. "Poring over IRS documents to make sure I submitted all the required forms became like a second job.

It was a labor' of love, but it's still not over yet. While the court closed the probate and discharged us of our duties in January 2007, the IRS will not release us as fiduciaries of the estate until September 2008.

Ms. Marek says that as she performed all the various duties, "my thoughts centered on never again making, the promise to handle anyone's Last Will and Testament."

Unfortunately, she had already promised to do the same for her mother long before her uncle died and her mother's estate, she says, "will be complicated."

*So Ms. Marek is applying some of the lessons she has learned, and her mother, having seen all that her daughter went through, "opened up and [now] actively involves me in her financial planning.

One example: Her uncle owned old bonds in his safe deposit box that had become unclaimed property back in Michigan, and it took Ms. Marek six months to work through that bureaucracy. Now, her mom has at least added her daughter's name to the checking account "so I can pay bills prior to receiving authority from the court."

Looking at what's ahead, Ms. Marek says, "some days I hope I'll pass before she does."

* * *
After serving as coexecutor of her father's estate, Lynne Elander, in Kirkland, Wash., offers these tips:

Know the location of important physical assets. That includes knowing where the keys are to any safe deposit boxes and the combinations of any safes in the house. Also, "know the secret hiding place for any special pieces of jewelry" or other heirloom items. "You don't want to throw out an old can of peas only to realize it had [Mom's] special pearl earrings."

Know if a safe deposit box exists. The one Ms. Elander had known about for years and for which she was an authorized signatory was closed without her knowing. She had to spend time calling around to various financial institutions her parents dealt with to determine whether a box still existed.

Be prepared to front the estate some money. "It took some time to get cash out of my dad's account and into an estate account [but] in the mean time there were bills due including a $7,000 property tax bill that would have incurred late fees and other penalties," Ms. Elander says. She put up the money and had the estate reimburse her.

Have multiple copies of death certificates for both parents . While financial institutions will want to see these for obvious reasons Ms. Elander says, "the biggest surprise was the magazine companies. Each one required an original, certified copy to eliminate the payment obligation."

Household goods are worth less than you think. Nobody wants any of it, Ms. Leander says, unless they're good antiques. "We hired a professional estate sale manage and he took 2O% off the top of all sales," she says. "But the biggest benefit was he also donated the /~omnis1/Stuff he couldn't. sell and we didn't have to worry about trucking it to Goodwill."

* * *
In contrast to Ms. Elander’s last piece of advice, Susa Newman; in Tucson, Ariz., say the biggest mistake she made when settling her mom's estate was "selling my mom's furniture through one of those estate sale places.

"At the time I felt Compelled to dispose of her furniture and appliances," she say: "Now, I wish I'd kept more of it in storage and taken the luxury of thinking more carefully about what I might have wanted to keep, or what someone else might want. We got an insultingly small figure from the sale. , "It still bothers me that mother's prized possession’s were sold for pennies to people I don't know."

* * *
Note: In my original column I mentioned that a financial planner had given me an Essential Document Locator that gave to my grandmother so that she could list where all the important papers, assets an other things are located. Countless readers asked for a cop of it. You can find it online @ wsj.com/loveandmoney

Run A Copy of the Essential Document Locator@ online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/documentlocator.pdf

Jeff Opdyke covers personal finance for The Wall Street Journal mail: lovemoney@wsj.com

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