Will?

theoretica

There are two aspects to a question like this - how it affects beneficiaries and family, and how it affects people outside this circle.

This only affects people outside the beneficiary and family circle if the proceeds of sale are required to pay debts, or the estate should pay inheritance tax. If the estate is easily below the inheritance limit and clearly solvent then mainy of the points raised above will not change matters for outside people or organisations.

Which comes to people who are beneficiaries and family. Within the family, presumably, the greatest value of selecting a piece of jewellery is usually as emotional keepsakes. If everyone involved, especially the residual beneficiaries are adults and happy then why introduce complications?

securityguy

It's futile to hold a discussion with someone who outlines an example, and then responds to any engagement with that example by saying "ah, but there are additional facts you don't know, so there". You said "A relative was left a box of some twenty gold, platinum and silver jewellery items that were given a value of £350.00 for probate." and then "win" the argument by adding " In fact the jewelry items were itemized because there were several beneficiaries." Presumably, if I respond to that you'll then add the disabled orphan who was being supported by the proceeds of that sale, or whatever.

If objects are left absolutely, the value only matters over issues of solvency and IHT as theoretica says. If they are part of more complex bequests, involving shares of value, the situation is different. The executors, having the will in front of them, know.

And the suggestion that executors are "despicable", "cavalier", "negligent" and so on if they do not get specialist valuations for books, piles of magazines, kitchen china and so on is fantastical. And it would be "illegal" (you're getting excited again) only if it were part of a deliberate scheme to deprive the government of IHT; that the executors knew or should reasonably have suspected that something was of substantial value.

The government position is "you should use a professional valuer for anything worth more than £500.", but that is circular: how do you know what is worth more than £500? If you have a pile of books in front of you, it is easily possible for just one of them to be worth £500. Should every book in every estate be valued just in case? The cover alone, without the record, of some versions of The Beatles' Yesterday and Today goes for £600: are people getting professional valuations of old LPs on the offchance, or are they simply giving them to charity shops? Watches: there are Swatches worth over a grand: do you think people should get Swatches, bought for thirty quid, professionally valued just in case?

VfM4meplse

securityguy wrote: »

It's futile to hold a discussion with someone who outlines an example, and then responds to any engagement with that example by saying "ah, but there are additional facts you don't know, so there". You said "A relative was left a box of some twenty gold, platinum and silver jewellery items that were given a value of £350.00 for probate." and then "win" the argument by adding " In fact the jewelry items were itemized because there were several beneficiaries." Presumably, if I respond to that you'll then add the disabled orphan who was being supported by the proceeds of that sale, or whatever.

If objects are left absolutely, the value only matters over issues of solvency and IHT as theoretica says. If they are part of more complex bequests, involving shares of value, the situation is different. The executors, having the will in front of them, know.

And the suggestion that executors are "despicable", "cavalier", "negligent" and so on if they do not get specialist valuations for books, piles of magazines, kitchen china and so on is fantastical. And it would be "illegal" (you're getting excited again) only if it were part of a deliberate scheme to deprive the government of IHT; that the executors knew or should reasonably have suspected that something was of substantial value.

The government position is "you should use a professional valuer for anything worth more than £500.", but that is circular: how do you know what is worth more than £500? If you have a pile of books in front of you, it is easily possible for just one of them to be worth £500. Should every book in every estate be valued just in case? The cover alone, without the record, of some versions of The Beatles' Yesterday and Today goes for £600: are people getting professional valuations of old LPs on the offchance, or are they simply giving them to charity shops? Watches: there are Swatches worth over a grand: do you think people should get Swatches, bought for thirty quid, professionally valued just in case?

So what's the answer?

Most of us have considerable "stuff" but aside from specific things that I will be bequeathing for none other than reasons of sentiment (costume jewellery worth little) I can envisage that if it's not of any domestic use it will go straight in a skip. Are these to be captured as "assets"?

Yorkshireman99

Use some common sense! What SG cannot grasp is that executorship is a position of trust and if someone is not prepared to do the job properly then they should not be doing it. The reality is that executorship is not easy and IS time consuming. There are plenty of salerooms that will offer a free valuation if you can take the item to them. There is no one size fits all answer. Very valuable items can be found in quite modest houses and likewise piles of worthless junk in mansions and all variations in between. A sensible testator will leave a list of any items of value with their will. Ultimately it is the executor's responsibility to decide. Just throwing things away because the executor can't be bothered to put a little effort in is not a responsible, or correct, way to act. Those who advocate it have no understanding of the legal obligations of executorship nor of how much the relatives may be upset by the whole issue of bereavement.

securityguy

"Most of us have considerable "stuff" but aside from specific things that I will be bequeathing for none other than reasons of sentiment (costume jewellery worth little) I can envisage that if it's not of any domestic use it will go straight in a skip. Are these to be captured as "assets"?"

No.

In the course of giving a load of old books to Oxfam, as I did recently, it's possible I accidentally gave them a book of value: Oxfam have a team whose job it is to try to split out valuable books from the general flow, too. It is not my responsibility to value books before I give them away, in case I die within seven years, and it is not executors' responsibility to value stuff which is unlikely to be valuable.

Yes, this argument only runs so far, and executors are expected to behave reasonably. The jewellery owned by your granny who never earned much money and lived in a council house all her life is unlikely to be very valuable, but it's reasonable to assume that the jewellery owned by a millionaire has, itself, intrinsic value. A collection of books is probably worthless, but if your dead relative was famous for collecting first editions you would be expected to behave differently.

The reality is that in most cases, valuable assets are obviously of value, and residual beneficiaries and executors are the same people, or at least overlap. YM is making the point that executors have a responsibility to ensure that fair value is got for assets, so that beneficiaries are paid correctly (and the HMRC). I disagree about the extent of that duty, and I suspect that "a box of costume jewellery which might contain something rather better" is the grey area we are debating. No-one seriously doubts that a safety deposit box full of jewellery with a special insurance policy has to be valued properly. No-one (I hope) is arguing that a pile of old magazines in the bottom of a cupboard has to be valued in case there's a rare issue of Private Eye worth ten quid mixed in. It is for executors to decide where they draw the line on the intermediate stuff.