Probate Valuation of Law Books: A Guide for Executors

When someone dies leaving a library of law books, the books are part of their estate, and as executor you have to put a value on them. That can feel daunting when the shelves are full of volumes you have never opened, so here is what the figure has to be, who can provide it and how to describe the books.

What value do law books need for probate?

The figure is what the books would have sold for on the day the person died.

GOV.UK's guidance on valuing an estate is to list everything the person owned that has a financial value, then find out or estimate what each item was worth on the date they died. For possessions, that means working out how much you would have got if you had sold them. The rule behind that is section 160 of the Inheritance Tax Act 1984, which sets the value of any property for Inheritance Tax as "the price which the property might reasonably be expected to fetch if sold in the open market at that time."

You need this figure even when there is no tax to pay, because GOV.UK says you need your estimate of the estate's value to apply for probate. It also points out that most estates are not taxed.

Probate value and insurance value are different

If the books were insured, there may already be a figure for them on an insurance schedule. The Law Society's guide to disposing of a law library explains the difference between the two kinds of valuation. An insurance valuation is the cost of replacing the books, a sale valuation is what you could expect to make by selling them, and insurance valuations tend to be higher.

It is the same gap as the one between what a new car costs and what your old car would fetch. Probate asks for the sale value, so an insurance figure is likely to overstate what the books are worth to the estate.

Do I need a professional probate valuation for law books?

That depends on whether the estate's full details have to go to HMRC.

Most estates are what GOV.UK calls excepted estates. When an estate is excepted and there is no Inheritance Tax to pay, you usually do not have to give full details of its value, and you report an estimated value when you apply for probate.

When full details are needed, they go to HMRC on form IHT400, with a schedule called IHT407 for household and personal goods. GOV.UK says the form needs accurate valuations, that you can get a professional valuation for anything worth over £1,500, and that you can estimate the value of cheaper things, such as ordinary household goods.

IHT407 has a box for antiques, works of art or collections, and the examples it gives include collections of books. That box asks for a description of each item and its open market value at the date of death, and if you have a professional valuation, it asks you to enclose a copy. HMRC's own manual tells its officers to make sure that any unsold items in an estate are realistically valued, which is why a figure you can explain is worth having.

The Law Society names Bloomsbury Auctions and Wildy & Sons Ltd as organisations that value collections for insurance, auction or probate. Its advice is to be clear which kind of valuation you need, so when you ask, say that it is for probate. If you are not sure what the estate's paperwork calls for, GOV.UK notes that you can hire a professional, such as a solicitor, to help with some or all of valuing an estate.

What if the law books are sold?

If the books are sold, the sale goes on the form beside the valuation. Beside each item's open market value at the date of death, IHT407 asks for the date of any sale and the gross sale proceeds, meaning the full price before any costs are taken off. Books are zero-rated for VAT, and our guide to VAT on second-hand law books sets out what HMRC says about a sale.

HMRC's manual adds that when an item has been sold for less than its market value, the person filling in the form is told to include the full open market value anyway. So a sale for less than the books were worth does not lower the value the estate reports.

How to describe a law library for a valuation

Whoever values the books needs to know what they are, and with law books that comes down to the series, the years, the edition and the condition. Here is what to note, set by set:

• The name of each set, as it appears on the spines. Law reports, such as the All England Law Reports, are series of books that collect judges' decisions in court cases.
• For law reports, the first and last years, and any years missing in between.
• For Halsbury's Laws of England, an encyclopaedia of the law in England and Wales, the edition. The fourth edition came out between 1973 and 1987, and the fifth has been published since 2008.
• For practitioner texts, the reference books solicitors and barristers consult to help their clients, the title and edition of each.
• Anything that looks very old. The Law Society says that legal books are more likely to be valuable if they were printed before 1800, so note any early dates you find on the title pages.
• The condition, such as damp, mould or loose bindings, because the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association notes that a book's condition makes a huge difference to its selling price.
• The rough size of the library, in bays or metres of shelving.

Photos do much of this for you. Take one photo of each bay of shelving, square on and well lit, and whoever values the books can read the sets, the years and the editions off the spines in one go. Our checklist for preparing a law library for collection goes through what to photograph and what to note.

A free valuation of the law books from us

We value law book collections for free, from photos or a list, and the figure we give you is the price we can pay for the books, which is a sale value. A formal written probate valuation is a separate thing, which the estate commissions from a valuer if it needs one. If the books were a late husband's, our guide to what to do with a deceased husband's law books covers who decides what happens to them.

If the estate sells to us, we pack the books from the shelves where they stand and collect them free from anywhere in the UK, and we can arrange collection from abroad. The payment goes into the bank account of whoever is selling for the estate. Where some of the books have little resale value, we can talk about collecting those free of charge as well, so they can leave with the rest. You can read more about clearing a lawyer's library for an estate with us.

When you have the photos and your notes on each set, send them through the valuation form or WhatsApp them to 07920 748314, with the postcode of the property where the library is. We will tell you what we can pay for the books.