House content valuation for IHT when house is jointly owned with cohabiting partner

yellowzest

There are 2 parts to my question:

1: Any suggestions for valuing the house contents for the IHT forms when the house is jointly owned?

The surviving owner is a cohabitating partner (not married or civil partnership). And as joint owner they now own the house fully and obviously won’t be selling its contents. 

I think I have to value the contents then divide by 2?? 

2: A new sofa was bought recently just before death in the deceased name so not sure if I have to include that as something owned in sole name or as it was bought for the jointly owned house should it be considered part of the jointly owned house contents?

(We are close to IHT limits so I’m at a point where the little things could matter - and I don’t want to get it wrong and be liable in the future).

Thanks

Flugelhorn

Generally house contents are generally not valued at very much as the secondhand value of furniture is quite low. I think I ended up putting £500 for the whole house and remember others saying similar. 
Suspect it only becomes an issue if there are valuable antiques / paintings etc

RAS

What would they get second hand? Less the cost of getting them removed from the house.
Frankly, not a lot. If the deceased had other family, maybe ask if any of them want anything personal?

Keep_pedalling

HMRC are not going to query a nominal sum for basic household items, you could even argue the value was zero as you can’t sell half a sofa. 

xylophone

Unless there is valuable jewellery, or artwork, or antique collections involved, a nominal sum is fine for contents because essentially you are giving a value for second hand furniture and fittings.

mark2jag

Sorry to hijack your thread, but........I am in the position of wanting to value stuff in my house and not the house itself. My parents died recently and left me the house which is filled with stuff that may or not be valuable such as coins,limited edition plates,etc etc. whenever i do a search for house contents valuations all i get is the results related to for insurance purposes, what I'm actually after is someone who might give me a valuation of the actual contents, can anyone help please. I'm aiming to have someone come round and do a valuation, within the confines of me staying socially distant from them. Anyone  got any useful ideas.

getmore4less

Auction houses often have people with a good eye for value and know experts 

For some items there may be a market on-line to get an idea like dealers sites or specialist forums..

JGB1955

Just go for £500 as your valuation
 Nobody is going to challenge that unless they know you have a Renoir stashed away. The reality is that you may end up paying someone to clear the house contents. We sold my father's 'valuables' at auction for a net £320, then spent £750 clearing the house.    

Savvy_Sue

If you think there MIGHT be something valuable, then an auction house is the answer, and I am sure that they are now able to work in a socially distanced manner. They may also be able to point you towards a good house clearance firm - ours did! It wasn't cheap, but it was worth every penny, especially as we knew the clearance people were trying to not just dump in landfill, which my mother in particular would have approved of. Of course she would have approved even more if we'd attempted to sell more of the house contents, but a random collection of thimbles and teaspoons with placenames on did not in fact have much value - and that was only the start of it!