Executor Duties for Personal Property: A Plain Guide

What the job is, in one paragraph

An executor (called a personal representative or administrator in some states) is the person responsible for gathering everything the deceased owned, paying what the estate owes, and distributing what is left according to the will or, without one, the state's rules. Personal property is the part of that job most people underestimate: not the house or the bank accounts, but the furniture, jewelry, tools, china, vehicles, collections and boxes of paper inside the house. It is the largest number of individual decisions the executor will make, it is where families fall out, and it is the part the court is least able to see, which is why the records matter.

The executor's duty is usually described as a fiduciary one: to act in the interests of the estate and its beneficiaries, not their own, with reasonable care. In practice, for the contents of a house, that comes down to four things: keep it safe, know what is there, get a fair price for what is sold, and be able to show what happened to all of it. Everything below is a version of one of those four. The details differ from state to state, and an attorney who handles probate in the state where the estate is being administered is the right person to confirm any of it; this guide is not legal advice.

Secure the property first

The executor's first responsibility toward the contents is simply to keep them from disappearing. That sounds obvious, and it is where the most damage is done, usually in the first two weeks and usually by people with good intentions.

• Control the keys. Find out who holds one and ask for it back, or change the locks. A house with six keys in circulation is a house whose contents you cannot vouch for.
• Stop informal removals. Relatives will say they were promised the clock, the ring or the truck. They may well have been. The place for that is the will, or the distribution you make later, not the week of the funeral. Say so kindly and say it to everyone, including yourself.
• Move the small valuables somewhere safe. Cash, jewelry, coins, firearms, watches and documents should be gathered, listed and locked up, whether in a safe, a safe deposit box or your own custody with a written note of what and when.
• Keep the house itself sound. Heating, insurance, mail, a neighbor who will call if something looks wrong. The insurer will usually want to know the house is unoccupied.
• Vehicles should be insured, kept and not driven by anyone until title and authority are sorted out.

The guide to clearing a house after a death covers the first days in more detail. The point here is only that the executor is the one answerable for the contents from the moment they take on the role, and answerable is a different thing from involved.

Take an inventory

Most probate processes require the executor to file an inventory of the estate's assets, often with values, within a set period after appointment. Even where the court does not demand one, an inventory is the executor's best protection: it is the document that lets you show a beneficiary, a year later, that the silver was sold for what you say it was and the painting went to the person the will named.

An inventory of personal property does not need to list every fork. A workable approach:

1. List individually anything of real value or specific mention. Jewelry, art, antiques, collections, vehicles, firearms, musical instruments, tools of any significance, and every item the will names. A photograph of each, a short description, and where it is now.
2. Group the rest by room or category. "Kitchen contents", "bedroom two furniture", "garage tools and hardware", with a photograph of the room as it stands. That is enough to show what was there.
3. Record cash and anything found hidden with the date and the place, and if possible a second person present.
4. Note anything that is not the estate's. Borrowed items, a grandchild's stored belongings, a neighbor's ladder. These go back, and the inventory should say so.

Do this before the house is sorted, not after. Photographs of every room, taken on the first day you have custody, cost nothing and answer more questions than any list.

Valuing the contents

The inventory usually needs values, and values are where executors most often reach for the wrong number. There is more than one kind. An insurance replacement value is what it would cost to buy the item new or equivalent; a fair market value is what a willing buyer would pay a willing seller; and an estate sale price is what someone will actually hand over on a Saturday morning in that town. They can differ several times over for the same object, and the guide to appraisal versus estate sale pricing explains which one is used where.

For the purposes of probate and any estate tax, the value that generally matters is fair market value at the date of death. For most household contents, that is modest, and a room-by-room estimate is accepted. For items that might be significant, a written appraisal from an independent appraiser is worth its fee, both because the court may need it and because it establishes the tax basis for whoever inherits. Whether the estate owes anything on a later sale is a question for a tax professional; do you owe taxes on estate sale proceeds? covers the general shape of it.

Two cautions. An estate sale company's walk-through estimate is useful, free, and not an appraisal; it tells you what a sale might gross, not what an item is worth for the inventory. And do not let a beneficiary value an item they expect to receive, for reasons that need no explaining.

Specific bequests, and what the family wants

The will comes first. If it leaves the piano to a named person, the piano goes to that person, and the executor's job is to deliver it and record that they did. Some wills refer to a separate written list of personal items, which several states recognize if it is signed and dated; ask the attorney whether the list is binding in yours. Where the will says nothing about a particular item, it falls into the residue, to be divided among the residuary beneficiaries in the shares the will sets.

Most of the contents of most houses are in the residue, and the residuary beneficiaries are usually the children. The executor can sell everything and divide the money, but families often prefer to take some items in kind, and an executor is generally free to let them, provided it is done fairly and the values are accounted for so that shares stay equal. The practical methods, from rotating picks to sticker systems to buying out a sibling's share, are in the guide to dividing personal property among siblings.

The executor is very often also a beneficiary, and often the one doing all the work. That is normal and permitted, but it is the reason for the records. Everything you take for yourself should be valued the same way as everything your siblings take, written down, and counted against your share. An executor who is scrupulous about this will rarely be challenged; one who is casual about it invites a challenge even when nothing improper happened.

Selling what is not kept

Once the specific bequests are delivered and the family has taken what it wants, the executor sells the rest and the proceeds join the estate. Whether the executor can sell before probate closes, and whether the court's permission is needed first, depends on the state, on the will, and on the kind of administration; can you hold an estate sale before probate closes? sets out the questions to put to the attorney.

The executor's duty in the sale is to get a fair price with reasonable effort, not the best conceivable price at any cost. That gives you room to choose the method that fits the estate:

• An estate sale company stages and runs a public sale in the house for a commission, commonly somewhere between roughly a third and a half of gross sales, varying by region and by estate. This suits a full house of ordinary and better goods. The guide to commission rates explains how the money works.
• An auction, on site or online, suits collections and antiques where competitive bidding is likely to beat a fixed tag. See estate sale versus auction.
• A buyout sells the entire contents for one sum. It is fast, and it leaves you unable to show what anything was worth, which is a poor position for an executor. Get at least one other opinion before accepting one.
• Donation, with a receipt, for what has little resale value.

Whichever route you take, the contract is the estate's contract. Read it with the contract checklist, make sure the company's accounting will be itemized rather than a single figure, and sign as executor, not in your own name. Ask for the company's insurance certificate and call the insurer named on it yourself; a company's own description of its coverage is its claim, not a fact anyone has checked for you.

A settlement statement listing what sold, for how much, the commission and every deduction is the document that closes this part of the inventory. Do not accept a company that will not provide one.

The records to keep

The executor will eventually give an accounting to the beneficiaries and, in many cases, to the court: here is what the estate had, here is what came in, here is what went out, here is what is left. For personal property, that accounting is only as good as the paper behind it.

• The inventory, with its photographs and values
• A list of every item distributed in kind, to whom, at what value, and when
• Receipts from beneficiaries acknowledging what they received (a signed one-line note is enough)
• Every appraisal, and the invoice for it
• The estate sale or auction contract, the settlement statement, and the payment record
• Donation receipts
• Invoices for clean-out, hauling, storage, locksmiths and anything else spent on the contents
• A short log of decisions: why an item was sold rather than distributed, why a buyout was declined, who asked for what

How long to keep it varies, but several years past the closing of the estate is a sensible floor, and the guide to estate sale records goes into what each document is for. The log of decisions is the one executors skip and the one that ends arguments fastest.

Where executors get into trouble

Very few executors act in bad faith. The ones who end up in a dispute usually did one of a small number of ordinary things:

• Let the family clear the house early, so that the inventory was taken after the best items had already gone.
• Took their own share first, or at an unrecorded value.
• Sold something a beneficiary had been promised without checking the will or the separate list.
• Accepted a buyout for the contents without any record of what was in the house.
• Mixed estate money with their own, paying the clean-out from a personal card and the sale proceeds into a personal account. Open an estate account and use only that.
• Kept no log, so that a fair decision made two years ago cannot be explained.

Every one of these is avoided by the same habit: write it down before you do it, and treat your own share exactly as you treat everyone else's.

What to do next

Secure the house, photograph every room, and start the inventory before anything is sorted. When you are ready to find out what the contents might bring, describe the estate once and local estate sale companies will reach out to you, free, for a walk-through; you can also browse companies near you first. The complete estate sale checklist takes the sale from that first visit to an empty house, and documents, photos and personal papers covers the boxes of paper that every executor inherits.

Frequently asked questions