Technical article

What Do You Own That Counts as a Store of Value, and Who in Your Family Knows About It?

Finding things takes weeks, and the first weeks are when the estate has the least time.

By Neil Solomon · 4 min read

Imagine a retired couple with a glass cabinet in the dining room, a few boxes in the garage and a box at the bank. The cabinet holds watches and a tray of coins. The garage holds a car under a cover. The bank box holds some jewelry. Their two grown children live in different countries. Suppose someone asks the children what is in each of those places. It may be a short conversation.

This piece is about that conversation, and about how common it is to skip it.

What the surveys show

Deloitte's Art & Finance Report 2025 asked wealth managers, collectors and art professionals. It is a survey of people close to the art world, not of the general public, so read the figures as a view from that side of the table. It is a tier B source.

The pattern is plain. People with an adviser tend to have a plan. People without one tend to carry the plan in their heads.

Wealth reports leave one thing out by design. A 2012 note on the Capgemini wealth report says art, jewelry and memorabilia are not counted in its totals. So when a headline says what a family is worth, the cabinet is often not in the number. That source is tier U, and it is old, so we give it as history.

Why the children matter here

Estate attorneys quoted by the University of Minnesota Extension say that personal property, not titled property, often causes the most problems for families. The Extension page gives no percentage. A 2000 study by Marlene Stum on how families pass on possessions found six themes. They include little talk about goals, different views of fairness, and different meanings attached to objects. It was a small, qualitative study, so it gives no percentages either.

The meaning point matters most for watches and jewelry. A watch can be a price to one child and a father's wrist to another.

The rules also ask for a list

In the United States, household and personal effects are itemized room by room on the estate return. Items can be grouped only if each is worth US$100 or less. In the United Kingdom, the HM Revenue and Customs form for household goods asks for jewelry items of GBP 1,500 or more one at a time, and for each vehicle, antique, work of art or collection. Both are tier A. Whoever settles the estate must build this list from scratch if the owner has not.

You might say the children will find everything when the time comes, and the will names who gets what. That may be so. A will tells the executor who receives property. It does not tell the executor that a coin tray sits behind the books, that the car is stored at a friend's barn, or which pieces are insured. Finding things takes weeks, and the first weeks are when the estate has the least time.

Doors you could open

You could write one page that names every place something valuable sits. You could add a line for each item, saying what it is and where the papers are. You could note who the item matters to, even if the will says otherwise. You could then show the page to one child, or to a trusted friend, and ask whether it makes sense to someone who has never seen the cabinet.

Two earlier stories on this site look at the same shelf from the other side: Collections: Who Is the Next Keeper? and When the Things Were Your Parents'.

Where in your home would a stranger have to look to find everything that matters? Share it here. Someone else may find the same blind spot in their own house.

Figures are estimates for planning, based on public data. Date read: October 2026.