Design of an integrated expert system for fiduciary accounting

This research was conducted in order to deal with the apparent lack of general expertise pertaining to the fiduciary responsibility associated with the administration of a decedents estate. The administration has legal, accounting, and income tax aspects. This paper has attempted to integate these aspects and provide the framework necessary to solve the defined problem by development of an expert system. The model takes a modular approach; to develop a decision support system (tier 1) from which the expert system (tier 2) can ultimately be derived. The paper presents a detailed analysis of the legal and accounting, as well as the income tax parameters of the fiduciary responsibility functions. In addition, systems considerations are addressed, additional research proposed, and finally conclusions are presented.