Selling jewellery as an executor: what to do before probate is granted

01

What the grant does, and whether you need one

A grant of probate is the document confirming that the executors named in a will have authority to deal with the estate. Where there is no will, the equivalent is letters of administration, and GOV.UK says the closest living relative can apply. Both do the same job: they prove, to a bank or anybody else, that the person holding the paperwork is entitled to act.

Probate is not always needed. GOV.UK says you may not need it where the person only had savings, or owned money, shares or property jointly so that it passes automatically to the surviving owner. It also says every organisation has its own rules, so the practical step is to ask the ones holding the assets.

Jewellery sits awkwardly in this, because nobody has to be asked for permission to open a drawer. There is no bank refusing to release it and no registry recording it. That makes it the easiest part of an estate to deal with early, and the easiest to get wrong.

02

What is worth doing while you are waiting

The grant can take weeks, and the house often has to be emptied sooner. The two do not have to be settled in the same month, and a good deal of useful work sits between them.

1. List and photograph everythingOne list and one set of photographs, made before anything leaves the house. It is the record that protects you from a beneficiary's memory, and what everything afterwards is checked against. Photograph groups as well as single pieces.
2. Keep it together, and keep it separate from your ownThe estate's jewellery in one box, yours in another, and nothing merged. Once mixed, the two are hard to separate again.
3. Find out what things areAsking what a mark means, whether a watch runs or whether a coin is an ordinary date commits the estate to nothing. Photographs can be looked at and answered while the grant is still on its way.
4. Get the possessions valued as the estate needsHousehold goods and personal possessions have to be valued for the estate, and that valuation is a separate exercise from any sale. The next section explains the difference, which is easy to miss.
5. Have the unusual pieces looked atSigned jewellery, a watch that runs, a coin with a mint mark and antique silver with a full set of marks all deserve a specialist opinion, and getting one can take weeks. Starting now saves the estate waiting later.
6. Then decide, once the grant is in your handWith the list made, the valuation done and the specialist opinions in, the actual decision about what to sell takes an afternoon.

What not to do meanwhile is sell, give away, share out between beneficiaries or send anything off for its metal. All four are hard to reverse, and all four are the sort of thing a family remembers. When the time comes to share things out, dividing jewellery between beneficiaries sets out the order to work in.

03

A probate valuation is not a sale, and not an insurance figure

Three different figures can be attached to the same brooch, and it is easy to be handed one when you needed another. Keeping them apart is the most useful thing in this guide.

Open market value

What the estate has to report. HMRC's manual defines it as the price which the property might reasonably be expected to fetch if sold in the open market at that time, and the relevant time is the date of death.

An insurance or replacement valuation

What it would cost to replace the piece new. HMRC notes that valuations prepared on other bases, such as for insurance, may not satisfy the statutory requirement, because a replacement figure can exceed open market value. An old insurance schedule is useful for identifying pieces and misleading about what they are worth.

What a buyer offers

What somebody will actually pay, now, for the piece as it is. It is a real figure, and not the same thing as either of the above. HMRC's manual does treat sales after the death, particularly at auction, as the best evidence of open market value at the date of the sale.

So an offer from any buyer, including Assaypost, is not a probate valuation and cannot stand in for one in the estate's accounts. If the estate needs a figure for HMRC, get it from a probate valuer or a solicitor, on the open-market basis, before you sell anything. Valuation, appraisal or offer sets out the differences in full.

It helps to know which form the possessions go on. HMRC's schedule for household and personal goods, form IHT407, covers antiques and jewellery alongside furniture and domestic items, so a jewellery box is not an afterthought in an estate return. Goods owned jointly with someone else go on a different form, IHT404.

04

When to get a solicitor or a probate valuer

Some of this you can do yourself and some of it you should not, and the boundary is clearer than it looks.

• Get a solicitor if the will is unclear or contested, if beneficiaries disagree, if you are unsure whether you have authority to act, or if the estate may pay Inheritance Tax. The same goes if you are unsure about the tax on selling inherited gold and coins, or you would rather not carry the responsibility. Acting as an executor carries personal duties, and a solicitor is there for exactly this.
• Get a probate valuer if the estate holds jewellery, silver, watches or coins of any substance. They value on the open-market basis HMRC asks for, they write it down in a form the estate can use, and they will usually flag the pieces that ought to go to a specialist.
• Get a specialist opinion on individual pieces: a coin dealer for coins, a watch specialist for watches, an auction house for anything signed or antique. This is separate from a probate valuation and both may be worth having.
• Do it yourself for the listing, the photographs, keeping things separate, and asking what things are. None of that requires a professional and all of it makes the professional's job quicker.

Every estate differs, and where this guide and a solicitor disagree, the solicitor is right.

05

Executor risks and exceptions

• Selling before the grant. An executor who sells estate property before the grant can be challenged over it, and the challenge is more likely to come from a beneficiary than from anyone official. Wait, or take advice about whether a grant is needed at all.
• No record of what was there. Where nothing was listed or photographed at the start, an executor has only their own memory to answer a beneficiary's question with. Make the list before the house is cleared, not after.
• Mixing the estate's jewellery with your own. Easily done when clearing a parent's house, very hard to unpick afterwards, and a ready source of family unpleasantness.
• Using an insurance valuation as a probate figure. It is the wrong basis and it can be too high. HMRC's manual warns that a replacement-value valuation for insurance may include too high a value.
• Distributing before the estate's debts are settled. GOV.UK warns that an executor who distributes without keeping enough back may have to pay remaining debts and tax personally, and getting a piece back from a relative is hard.
• Being hurried. Estate agents, house clearers, relatives and your own exhaustion all push towards speed. Jewellery does not perish and neither do coins. Nothing here needs to be done this week.

06

When not to use this route

Some pieces should not take this route at all. Anything signed, any watch that runs, any coin with a mint mark and any antique silver with a full set of marks should go to a specialist first. The guide to what to have looked at explains how to pick them out. The probate and estate jewellery page sets out how Assaypost handles an estate once you are ready, and the identity and provenance guide covers the documents that are asked for and why.