Settle

The work that comes after.

When someone you love dies, there are 30+ tasks that need to happen. Settle guides you through them — one step at a time, at your pace.

April 2026 · Product Prototype

The Problem

Families spend an average of 570 hours and $12,616 settling an estate. They contact 20 to 40 institutions, each requiring different documentation, different forms, different proof of authority. They do this while grieving.

We built Settle because nobody should navigate this alone.

The Product

What it looks like to use it

High Fidelity

1
Guided Intake
An interview, not a form. Plain-language questions that build your personalized plan. "I'm not sure" is always an option.
2
Daily Three
Three tasks, each with a call script. Designed for grief fog. Enough to move forward, not so much it overwhelms.
3
Full Task Plan
All 38 tasks by phase — dependencies, deadlines, discovered benefits. The spreadsheet families build on their own, built for them instead.

Low Fidelity — Extended Coverage

Wireframe fidelity. Exploring core utility screens before investing in visual polish.

4
Benefit Discovery
4 benefits found: $4,520 + $1,840/mo. Social Security, unclaimed property, VA burial, pension. Money families didn't know existed.
5
Document Inbox
What's uploaded, what's needed, what each document unlocks next. The paper trail, made visible.
6
Notification Service
23 institutions. Three tiers. What Settle sent automatically, what went by mail, what still needs a voice. Seven calls you didn't have to make.
7
Pricing
Free to $399. Hardship program. Benefit recovery commission. "Take your time. We'll be here."

The Strategy

How this product thinks

V
Vision
$15.77B market, 1.86M estates per year, competitive landscape, business model. Emotionally honest, data-grounded.
B
Business Requirements
70 requirements across 10 domains. Tiered notification service. Grief-aware design constraints. Plain-language glossary.
R
Roadmap
Three-year plan. 10 states to 50. Insurance partnerships. Benefit recovery engine. North star: hours saved per estate.
UX
UX Journey Map
Diego's worst week to closure. Six phases, full emotional arc, persona branching, phone scripts. The story the product has to earn.

The Architecture

How it is built

P
Prerequisites & Decisions
Read this first. 11 architectural decisions with tradeoffs. Four-service MVP budget. pgcrypto encryption patterns. Lob cost reality check.
T
System Architecture
Rules engine, three-tier notification service, benefit scanner, encrypted document vault. SVG component diagrams. 10 ADRs.
D
Data Model
12 tables, visual ERD, pgcrypto SSN encryption, task DAG, versioned state rules, row-level security policies. Full DDL.
I
Infrastructure
Fly.io, Neon, Lob mail pipeline. $105/mo at launch, $3,430/mo at scale. Encrypted vault. Disaster recovery. SOC 2 mapping.

The Business

How it sustains itself

$
Payment Architecture
Per-estate, not subscription — grief is not recurring revenue. $199 to $399. Benefit recovery commission. No dark patterns.
G
Go-to-Market Plan
SEO-first, ethics-constrained marketing. Funeral home and hospice partnerships. First 100 users. 90-day launch. $59 to $123/mo budget.
C
Competitive Positioning
Accessible and does the work: an empty quadrant. Empathy ($162M raised), Atticus, ClearEstate analyzed. Defensibility. Incumbent response.
U
User Research Plan
Trauma-informed protocols. 25-minute interviews. Call script role-play testing. Van Westendorp pricing study. Grief resources for researchers.

If you're building something for people in their worst moments, the product has to be worthy of that trust.