For families dividing a home they loved

The appraisers valued what they thought was important and passed over some of her best rugs and paintings. I caught a $100,000 gap only because I found an old appraisal from the 1990s, and it could have made the split between my sister and me unfair. We started with a spreadsheet, and it wasn’t enough.

I’ve also seen the other side. A relative’s estate is being handled by a large bank, and more than two years later, eight of us are still waiting. The trust officer controls the list, so updates aren’t real-time, and with multiple heirs to track, changes often get missed. The officer isn’t careless: they are re-typing emails from all of us, with no shared tool. Some items come back without photos, and there’s no shared place to see who chose what or talk it over as a family.

So I’ve been on both sides of an estate, and both could have gone smoother, for the same reason. Without a shared list, a family has too much to manage. When only someone else holds the list, the family has less say and communication breaks down.

I wanted every family member to see what was there, say what mattered to them, and know the outcome was fair, without anyone left out of the conversation. When I couldn’t find anything that did that, I started cataloguing her things one by one. That list grew into Gentle Sort, and I built its AI estimates so other families don’t have to rely on luck to catch what the appraisers missed.

The decisions stay with your family, where they belong. Gentle Sort simply holds the photos, the wishes and the record of every choice. Instead of worrying about who got what, or whether it was fair to everyone, you can spend your energy on each other, healing from your loss and staying connected through the grief.

May Gentle Sort help other families navigate the waters of settling a family estate with greater ease and harmony.