Fiduciary administration is governed by deadlines that are numerous, interdependent, and unforgiving — return due dates, election windows, annuity and term dates, and the obligations that follow from each. They depend on the specific facts of a matter and on the terms of the governing instrument, and they shift when those facts change. Tracked by hand, on calendars or task lists, the dates are only as reliable as the person who entered them, and they rarely show why a given date applies.
Cascade works from what actually happened. You record source facts — a date of death, an EIN obtained, an election made, the terms of an instrument — and Cascade derives the obligations that follow, rather than asking anyone to enter deadlines by hand. Every active obligation, across all matters and all tracks of work, is gathered into a single Universal Docket.
When a fact is recorded or corrected, the affected obligations are recalculated, so the record reflects the current facts rather than a past snapshot. Each track of work also carries a compliance state derived from its own record — for example, awaiting facts, active, deadlines met, or fully closed — calculated from the obligations themselves rather than set by hand.
| Workflow | Status |
|---|---|
| Federal Estate Administration / Form 706 | Active |
| Federal Gift Tax / Form 709 | Active |
| GRAT Administration | Active |
| QPRT Administration | Active |
| Promissory Note Administration | Active |
| Fiduciary Income Tax / Form 1041 | Active |
The workflow catalog is intentionally extensible. Workflow families are represented as independently versioned rule sets and may be added without altering the underlying compliance record model.
A calendar or task list holds dates that someone typed in, and a task is marked done with a checkbox. Cascade differs in two ways. First, obligations are derived from recorded facts and instrument terms, not entered — and they are recalculated when the facts change. Second, an obligation is discharged by recording the real-world event behind it — an estate EIN obtained, a Form 706 filed, an election made — not by toggling a status.
Because each obligation is closed against a recorded fact rather than a status toggle, the state of the record can be relied upon: every change traces to something that actually happened.
Because obligations are derived, Cascade can show its work. Every obligation records its provenance — the inputs and rules it came from — and an authority class identifying the kind of source it rests on, such as a statute, the governing instrument, or an internal operational step. Each also carries a derivation trace: the ordered steps showing how its date was reached.
Together these let a reviewer see not only what is due, but why it is due and on what authority — and, once an obligation is satisfied, preserve the record that it was. Provenance, authority classification, and derivation traces are treated as first-class parts of the record rather than after-the-fact annotations.
Cascade is read in two postures. Those who maintain the record — operators — record source facts and let the platform derive the resulting obligations. Counsel reviews the record — every obligation's authority class, provenance, and derivation trace is available for review without any need to maintain the docket.
In the counsel posture the record is presented complete and read-only: authority, provenance, derivation, correction history, and compliance state remain fully legible while maintenance actions are withheld. Counsel reviews; counsel does not keep the docket.
Compliance state, precisely: a track is Dark before it has the facts to generate deadlines, Active while deadlines are live, DeadlinesClosed once its deadline obligations are satisfied, and AllClosed once every obligation is resolved — each derived from the record, not asserted.
The record is built to be trusted at the system level. Once created, an obligation's fields are immutable except for its status, and obligations are never silently deleted. Corrections are append-only — a new entry supersedes a prior one through recorded supersession, and the earlier entry is retained as history rather than overwritten. Every transition is captured in an audit entry, so correction history and supersession remain visible across the record.
Cascade organizes administration in three levels. A client is the principal party an engagement serves. A matter is a managed file scoped to that client. A workflow is an operational track within a matter — a single body of compliance work, such as an estate filing or a GRAT administration.
A matter may carry more than one workflow track at once. Source facts, obligations, corrections, and audit history belong to the workflow, while the Universal Docket aggregates every active obligation across all matters and all workflow tracks into one record.
Cascade is being developed and validated as a professional operating platform for trust-and-estates administration. Cascade is in active development and is not yet generally available. Each supported workflow derives obligations from recorded facts and instrument terms under versioned, illustrative rule sets intended for professional review rather than as legal advice.
Inquiries can be directed to the project team. Additional contact details will be added in a later release.