How to Read the Executor Report in Celestial Divide

Once the solver runs, the executor report tells the full story: how the estate was divided, why certain assets were sold, and how well the outcome served each beneficiary. Here's how to read it.

What This Guide Covers

• The value range and how to interpret captured value
• The valuation matrix and what "no jealousy" means
• Reading each beneficiary's estate view
• The achievement score
• The pre-solver audit trail
• How the solver handles debt and infeasibility

The Value Range: How Much Value Did the Estate Capture?

At the top of the executor report, you'll find a value range with three figures:

Minimum — the floor. This is what the estate would yield if every asset were liquidated at its effective sale price: sold quickly, to a dealer or buyer who's not paying top dollar. It's the baseline that represents the worst-case net value after debts are paid.

Maximum — the ceiling. This is what the estate could theoretically achieve if every asset were given to the person who values it most. No constraints, no compromises — just optimal matching.

Actual — what the solver achieved. This is the real outcome after running the division algorithm with everyone's bids and the estate's constraints.

From the minimum and maximum, you get the available range — the gap between the worst possible outcome and the best. The report then shows how much of that range was captured. In a well-run estate, that capture percentage should be high. An estate that captures 99% of its available value range is performing nearly as well as theoretically possible.

Inheritance Constraints: A Quick Check

Below the value range, the report confirms whether all inheritance constraints were fulfilled. This is a pass/fail check. If it passes, the allocation honored every rule that was configured for the estate — splits, disparity tolerance, any predefined conditions. If it doesn't pass, that's a flag worth investigating before the report is shared.

The Valuation Matrix: Reading for Jealousy

The valuation matrix shows how each beneficiary values everyone else's share — not just their own. This is the mechanism for checking whether the outcome is truly fair, not just nominally equal.

Values in the matrix are expressed per one percent of the estate. This standardization matters: if beneficiaries hold different percentage shares (say, 30/30/40 rather than equal thirds), comparing raw totals would be misleading. Normalizing to a per-percent figure lets you make apples-to-apples comparisons regardless of split size.

Reading the matrix: each row represents one beneficiary's perspective. The column values show what that person believes each allocation is worth per percent. If a beneficiary sees their own share as higher than anyone else's in their row, the outcome is working as intended — each person believes they received the best deal available. That's the goal the solver is optimizing toward.

If any beneficiary values someone else's allocation more than their own, that's jealousy. Some disparity tolerance is acceptable if it's been configured that way. But zero jealousy — where everyone genuinely prefers their own allocation — is the ideal result.

The Estate View: Each Beneficiary's Breakdown

For each beneficiary, the report provides a detailed view of their allocation.

Assigned assets are listed with:

• Asset name and the percentage allocated (100% for indivisible assets like a home; partial percentages for divisible assets like a limited partnership interest)
• Good faith estimate — the consumer-to-consumer market value
• Effective sales price — the quick-sale value, comparable to dropping a vehicle at a dealership and walking out with cash. This applies to homes, businesses, and personal property alike
• The other beneficiaries' bids on each asset, so you can see what everyone was willing to pay

Minimum required value is the floor each beneficiary was entitled to: their proportional share multiplied by the estate's minimum value. This is the baseline the solver must meet for each person.

Subjective share received is what the beneficiary actually received, from their own perspective. An achievement of 122% of the minimum required means they came out roughly 22% better than they would have in a pure liquidation scenario — the direct value created by the division process over a simple sell-everything approach.

The report also shows totals excluding cash and debt, which becomes relevant when beneficiaries have contributed external cash to buy out a particular asset, such as a family home or a business interest.

The Pre-Solver Audit Trail

The audit trail is the most transparent part of the report. It documents exactly what the solver tried, what it rejected, and how it arrived at the final allocation. For practitioners who need to explain the outcome — to a client, a court, or a skeptical family member — this is the section to point to.

In a straightforward estate with no debt and no assets that need to be sold, the audit trail is brief. The solver runs, constraints are met, and the report notes it completed without iteration.

In more complex estates, the audit trail tells a more involved story.

How the Solver Handles Infeasibility: A Farm Estate Example

Consider an estate with meaningful debt — medical bills, outstanding obligations — and multiple land parcels held by a family that wants to keep as much as possible.

The solver's first attempt is to divide the estate without selling anything. If that's infeasible (the debts can't be covered by the allocation alone), it begins identifying candidates for sale.

The selection logic starts with low-demand assets: items where none of the beneficiaries placed strong bids — assets they're barely willing to pay more for than the effective sale price would bring. The solver tries these first, in order of lowest demand and lowest dollar value, to minimize how much needs to leave the family.

In a farm estate example, the sequence might look like this:

• Try selling the fishing pond → infeasible, revert
• Try selling soybeans (higher value) → infeasible, revert
• Try selling both → still infeasible, revert
• Try selling the cattle ranch alone → infeasible, revert
• Try ranch + fishing pond → infeasible
• Try ranch + soybeans → infeasible
• Try ranch + fishing pond + soybeans → feasible

Once the solver finds a combination that covers the debts, it stops. It doesn't keep selling. The result is an allocation where the low-demand parcels are liquidated, the debts are paid, and the remaining assets go to the family members who valued them most. The son keeps his tractor and the corn lots. The daughter keeps the family home. The youngest keeps their camera equipment. The estate gets resolved without selling what mattered most to anyone.

Overriding the Solver

If the solver's outcome produces a sale that everyone objects to, there's a path forward. Any asset can be pre-allocated — effectively withheld from the solver's decision-making. The solver will work around whatever has been manually assigned and find the best feasible outcome within those constraints.

This is useful when a family has a strong consensus that a particular asset shouldn't be sold, even if the algorithm would otherwise select it as a low-demand candidate. Pre-allocation gives practitioners a way to honor that preference while still generating a defensible, documented solution for everything else.

Using the Report in Practice

The executor report is designed to be shared and explained. Every figure in it traces back to something the beneficiaries submitted or the executor configured — bids, splits, disparity tolerance, pre-allocated assets. If a family member questions why a particular asset was sold, the audit trail shows the iteration sequence that led there. If they question whether the outcome is fair, the valuation matrix shows whether jealousy exists.

For estate administration purposes, this is the documentation that supports the final distribution.

Celestial Divide is estate asset division software built for professionals. It helps executors, estate attorneys, trust officers, and family law practitioners manage asset allocation, document every decision, and produce defensible outcomes — without spreadsheets or manual negotiation.