Inheritance of a substantial coin collection

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
February 19, 2022
1 reply
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Hi . My brother recently died and left a substantial coin collection (several hundred thousand). but little in the way of other real property. We are getting the coins assessed as I understand taxes are only paid upon selling them and based on any profits or difference between FMV at the time of death and the sell price. My question is how do we prove the coins were inherited? Death certificate only? We have a will and trust but may not use the trust because of the lack of real property and instead use Affidavit of Small Estate. Is this enough? My understanding is that coin collection is personal property and does not need to be included in a trust but then how do you prove inheritance? Valerie

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Anonymous_

Level 15

A lot of this is dependent upon state law.

For one thing, property (the coin collection) worth "several hundred thousand" may not qualify for a small estate administration.

Regarding the trust, the collection should be listed on a statement (or schedule, commonly termed "Schedule A", or it cannot be included in the trust corpus (unless the terms of the trust specify that all of the grantor's property is to be included).

I would highly recommend that you engage the services of local legal counsel since, again, these matters are highly dependent upon state law.

As far as the IRS is concerned, any (validated) document showing next of kin, named beneficiaries, et al, will typically suffice for your purposes (obviously, retain everything including multiple copies of the death certificate).