Estate Inventory

Playing devils advocate here, could the situation be that someone has takena cursiory look at the contents, decided that they and any property are welll under the IHT threshold and therefore it's not worth making a full inventory ? Or even if it's above , they've decided it's worth roughly (say) £10k and the full value will onky be established when it's sold and it's not worth the time and trouble to list everything separately ?

I dont know if this is in Scotland for example and its different there, but I've just done probate for a modest estate in England and there is no requirement to produce an inventory as such, there's just a requirement to estimate the value of the items owned by the deceased. So I roughly worked it out based on major items but certainly didn't itemise everything in the flat, not by a long way. Had my mother owned a sit on lawn mower for example, I'd have assessed its value and added that to the total valuation but there is nowhere to list items like that

So when you say "when does an estate inventory need to be submitted by" there is no estate inventory submission required. You do need to itemise total values of various categories such as shares, property foreign assets etc but you do not, within each of those (or at least, not for house contents or bank accounts) "submit" an inventory to anyone.

Do you suspect that the person doing the valuation / executor will be hiding things and trousering the Money? Or is it sentimental items? Or something else?

P2P wrote: »

Hopefully a quick question

When does an estate inventory (complete not partial) need to be submitted by?

there is no such thing as submitting the inventory.

The reason I ask is that the estate administrator has only submitted a partial inventory with items I can identify, missing.

what do you mean by submitted

The solicitors have advised that the rest of the content (missing items) will be included after the house is sold, but I am concerned that items will 'disappear' or be sold in the meantime.

I have some photographic evidence that supports my position i.e. where I can access the garage and shed, none of these items (including a sit on mower) etc aren't included in the inventory produced to date

Thanks.

The "inventory an account" is what an administrator used to track all the assets and what happens to them.

I am trying to find out legally when the inventory is required?

There is no legal requirement to give(submit) it to anybody unless told to by the court.

estates administration act 1925(with amendments) s.25

Duty of personal representatives.

The personal representative of a deceased person shall be under a duty to!!!8212;
(a)collect and get in the real and personal estate of the deceased and administer it according to law;

(b)when required to do so by the court, exhibit on oath in the court a full inventory of the estate and when so required render an account of the administration of the estate to the court;

As the court will always say do an inventory and account if asked it is common practice to create one and distribute it to the interested parties(like residual beneficiaries) anyway.

This should contain all known assets as soon as they are known about, there is no reason to leave anything off until later this includes the share of those passed by survivorship.
The inventory should also include debt and credits.

The account(ing) tracks the assets and cash to their final destination, expenses,tax, distribution etc.

How detailed an inventory needs to be is left to the discretion of the Administrator and often items are grouped, eg personal belongings may be sufficient or broken down with more detail or only valuable items singled out. eg.
mink coat £4,000
other clothes 50p

The IHT return that goes with the probate application can include information that does not have to be included on the inventory but can impact the IHT due suitable records to account for the IHT bill if any also need to be kept should a full detailed account be requested.

the inventory used for the IHT forms can be very different to the full estate administration one, although in many cases they are close.
The administrator may be happy for the IHT return to use "household good £XXXX"
The beneficiaries may want a more detailed list as things are allocated to different people.