What to Do With a Deceased Husband's Law Books

If your husband was a solicitor, a barrister or a judge, his law books may fill a whole room, and you may have no idea what they are or whether anyone wants them. You do not need to know any of that to deal with them well.

Everything below applies just as much to a late wife's or civil partner's books. Our guide to inherited law books covers what to look for on the shelves of any estate.

Who decides what happens to his law books?

His books are part of his estate, which is the money, property and possessions of the person who has died. Whoever deals with the estate deals with the books. If he left a will, that is the executor or executors named in it. If there is no will, GOV.UK says the closest living relative can apply for probate, which is the legal right to deal with the estate.

You may be the executor yourself, or it may be someone else, such as a solicitor or one of your children. Either way, if there is a will, read it first. It may leave particular books to particular people, and those should be set aside for them.

If there is no will, the law decides who inherits what. In England and Wales, a husband, wife or civil partner who survives inherits the whole estate when there are no children. When there are children, the surviving partner inherits all the personal property and belongings of the person who has died, along with a fixed sum and half of whatever is left. When there are no children, his books pass to you with the rest of the estate. When there are children, they pass to you as part of his belongings, unless he was still using them mainly for his work when he died, because the law's definition of personal belongings leaves out anything used mainly for business. If he was still working, ask whoever is dealing with the estate how the books are treated. Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own rules, so check the guidance for where he lived.

Is it legal to remove items from a house after someone dies in the UK?

Yes, when it is done by the executor, and done carefully. Bishop Fleming, a firm licensed for probate work by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, says executors are able to collect or clear items from a property before probate is granted. Before anything is cleared, it suggests thinking about:

• whether any items have been specifically gifted in the will;
• preparing a full inventory of the estate's assets;
• arranging professional valuations, where appropriate, for things of value;
• clearing the property with another person present, so there is a witness if something later goes missing.

The inventory matters because the estate has to be valued. GOV.UK tells the person dealing with the estate to start by listing everything belonging to the person who died that has a financial value, including household and personal items. The next step is to find out or estimate what each one was worth on the date of death. For things such as cars, jewellery and paintings, it says to work out how much you would have got if you had sold them.

So before any book leaves the house, it should be on the list with a value next to it. For a library, the easiest inventory is a set of photographs, one of each bay of shelving, each taken facing the shelves with enough light to read every title on the spines. Keep a copy for the estate's records.

GOV.UK also advises against making any financial plans or putting property on the market until you have probate. If you are not sure whether selling the books should wait for probate as well, ask whoever is handling the estate before you agree to a sale. A free valuation from us is a sensible first step either way, because it tells the estate what we can pay for the books before anyone decides anything.

What to check before the books go

Go through the books he used most before anyone packs them. Look for anything tucked inside: letters, photographs, notes in his handwriting, a card he kept as a bookmark. These are the things that cannot be replaced, and they are easy to miss once a book is in a box.

Think about whether you want to keep any of the books yourself. A volume he wrote in, or one he always reached for, may matter more to you than anything it would sell for. If you keep a volume from the middle of a set, tell us which one, so the valuation matches what is on the shelves.

Keep each set together where it stands, along with its supplements, binders and index volumes, because they all belong to the set. Our checklist for preparing a law library for collection goes through the rest, from photographing the shelves to where a van can stop.

If he was still practising on his own when he died, his practice and its client files are a separate matter from his books. LawCare, the mental health charity for the legal sector, notes that a spouse or personal representative may have the authority to deal with a solicitor's affairs without being entitled to run the practice, and that it is important for the personal representative to take independent advice. If you find client papers among the books, set them aside and ask whoever is advising the estate about them, so they do not leave with the library.

What his law books might be worth

Law books are hard to judge from the outside. Two shelves of matching volumes can look alike and be worth very different amounts, depending on which set each one is, whether the run has gaps, which edition it is and what condition it is in. Our guide to whether old law books are worth anything explains each of those in plain terms, and our guide to how to find out if old law books are worth anything shows how to read the spines and title pages yourself.

This is also why it pays to have the books valued on their own if a house clearance firm is emptying the rest of the house. To anyone who has not worked with law books, a set of law reports can look like any other row of old books.

A few law books are worth money as rare books. The Law Society's guidance is that legal books are more likely to be valuable if they were printed before 1800. If you think he had something very old, photograph its title page and tell us.

Having his law books valued and collected

We buy law book collections and sets: law reports, Halsbury's Laws and Statutes, encyclopaedias of forms and precedents, practitioner texts, journals and rare law books. You do not need to know what any of them are, because the photos of the spines tell us. We value the collection for free from photos or a list. If you go ahead, we pack his books from the shelves and collect them free, wherever in the UK the house is, and the money for them goes into the seller's bank account. Our guide to VAT on second-hand law books explains how HMRC treats the sale of books.

If some of his books have little resale value, we can talk about collecting those free of charge as well, so you are not left with part of his library still to deal with.

If you would like some of his books to be given to people who will use them, our guide to donating law books sets out who takes what. Our page on clearing a late lawyer's library for an estate covers how selling the library to us works.

Getting a valuation

The photos you took for the inventory will do for the valuation too. Add a close-up of anything you think might be old or rare, then send them through the valuation form or WhatsApp them to 07920 748314, and say where the house is, by town or postcode. We will value his collection for free.