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Help to value the estate

The aim of valuing the estate is to have a list of all the assets and debts with their corresponding values on the date of death (anything that happened since then is irrelevant for this process, with the exception of funeral expenses which are included in their own box).

You don't need a detailed list of all the deceased person's possessions if there is no Inheritance Tax to pay. You can simply group them all together and put a reasonable estimate based on the current market value (which is usually very low).

For property, you can get a free valuation. If nobody is living in the property, it's important to use the highest justifiable value to mitigate any Capital Gains Tax should the property sell for more than the value you put in the form (assuming a higher value doesn't push you into paying Inheritance Tax, which is at a higher rate).

For financial accounts/assets, where appropriate, you'll need:

The company name and branch/office location
Account/asset type, along with the account number or reference
The 'date of death' or 'probate' value provided by the company or valuer (this is different to a statement balance). For shares, you can value these yourself.

For anything owed by the estate on the date of death, you'll only need the date of death values. You may wish to make a note of the other information for your own purposes.

To avoid duplicating work, you can use our inventory template spreadsheet (download) to make a note of all the assets in the format required for your inventory. If you want help to create your inventory now, before using our interactive guide, access our detailed inventory guide.