Locate and List - Household and Personal Items

Another responsibility of the executor or estate administrator may be to prepare an inventory of the decedent's household and personal items. This is necessary in order to assign value to the items for probate and tax purposes.

Depending on the size of the estate, a lot of times household items won't have extremely large cash values. Many items may be disposed of to charity or an estate sale. However, you may come across items that will have significant value such as furniture, antiques, or other collectible items.

Most importantly, you will want to make sure that nobody goes through and removes any of the decedent's property before you can make a full inventory. This may be difficult if family or friends have access to the decedent's house. If anything has been removed, try your very best to retrieve those items immediately. It may be possible to check against an existing inventory list found in the estate plan to discover if anything is missing.

Consider contacting a professionalLos Angeles Estate Administration Lawyer who may be able to review an existing estate plan to determine which items should remain as assets and what their values may be.


*This blog entry was not written by an Attorney and should not be constituted as professional legal advice.