| Title: | Market Investing |
| Moderator: | 2155::michaud |
| Created: | Thu Jan 23 1992 |
| Last Modified: | Thu Jun 05 1997 |
| Last Successful Update: | Fri Jun 06 1997 |
| Number of topics: | 1060 |
| Total number of notes: | 10477 |
I've an interesting problem here:
My wife's mother passed away recently leaving assets which are to
be "divided by 4" among the children. The cash is easy to divide
up but there are also some tangibles (e.g., rings, car, etc.). My wife
insists on getting one of the rings (for sentimental reasons); this was
agreed to by all of the children. The problem is that because they are
trying to divide things equally, the ring will have to get a "value"
put on it so that my wife can forfeit that much cash in exchange for
the ring. For example, if we are to get $1000 and the ring is worth
$500, my wife will get the ring but only $500. The challenge in all of
this is to determine the "value" of the ring.
Taking it to a jeweler and asking for an appraisal will cost about $50
and the "value" they place on the ring will be "replacement value" which
is very high. The ring was bought 10 years ago for $1,500. Fueding
family members insist that the jewelry always goes up in value and
therefore the ring should be valued at much more than $1,500 dollars.
I don't agree with this (i.e., if we tried to sell this ring tomorrow,
for $1,500 I don't think we'll get that much). I think that if you obtain
a "value" for something in this kind of situation, you have to get the
"value" someone would pay for it if you tried to sell it in the
classified ads.
There is also a car involved and the family members who got the car
determined the "value" of this car by using "blue-book" value -- which
is easy enough to get. We would like to get a "blue-book" value for
the ring as well so that we can be consistent. Does anyone know how to
get this?
Thanks,
Dennis
| T.R | Title | User | Personal Name | Date | Lines |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 732.1 | TLE::FELDMAN | Software Engineering Process Group | Wed Jun 08 1994 14:45 | 34 | |
I'd be very suprised if you could find some written authority that would give a current value for a complete ring. If you could, it most likely would still require some expertise, to determine the total amount of precious metal in the ring, and the overall quality of any precious stones in the ring. Personally, I'd pay to get it appraised. You can either go with a jeweler, or better yet, a professional appraiser who works with jewelry. I would expect either one of these to be able to give you both prices: what you would have to pay retail to replace it, and what you could get for it if you sold it to a jeweler. I don't know what you did for the car, but I'd use the average of these two values to determine what to use for the ring. (The Blue Book for cars has both a retail and wholesale value, so the same problem occurs.) If the jeweler you spoke to only agreed to give a retail replacement value, then I'd shop around for another appraiser. Depending on how cut and dry the issue is, you may even want to cough up the money for two or three appraisals, and take either the average or the median. If none of the appraisers you can find are willing to discuss wholesale value (unlikely), I'd assume a markup of 100% (i. e. they'd pay half of what they would sell it for), and thus set the fair market value at 75% of the appraisal (halfway between what their purchase and sale prices). There is another alternative which may technically be fairer, though I'm not sure whether it would work with any particular set of family members. That is to simply auction it off between the four beneficiaries, and divide the cash from the auction equally between the four. Perfectly fair, but could potentially cause hard feelings. Gary | |||||
| 732.2 | SOLANA::MAY_BR | Yankees are an embarassment-GeorgeK | Wed Jun 08 1994 22:20 | 6 | |
You most like will have to get everything in the estate appraised, as
most states (for tax purposes) require it. A licensed appraiser can
give you the value. The value they give for these is generally fairly
reasonable.
Bryuce
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| 732.3 | Where do we find one? | TOOLS::TLE::PERIQUET | Dennis Periquet | Thu Jun 09 1994 00:51 | 11 |
Thanks for your suggestions Gary & Bruce.
Bruce, where can I find a licensed estate appraiser? Perhaps, I can
call a lawyer who does estate settlements and maybe he/she can give me
a referral. Such a person would be quite useful in this situation; we
could have him/her value everything so that all tangibles are values in
a consistent way.
Dennis
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| 732.4 | SOLANA::MAY_BR | Yankees are an embarassment-GeorgeK | Thu Jun 09 1994 13:51 | 6 | |
Look under appraisers in the yellow pages. Like I said, most states
will require you to have the estate appraised by a licensed appraiser
anyway.
Bruce
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