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A certified valuer will listen to your situation and answer any questions you may have, at no cost.
Before a Tasmanian estate is shared out, the executor has to stand behind the figure given to a family company, a trust interest or a loan to a relative. We provide that figure at the correct date, prepared for no single beneficiary, so the executor can show exactly how it was reached.
Indicative valuations from A$799. Certified Summary and Detailed reports from seven business days.
Hobart executors need a date-of-death market value for each estate asset with no published price: a family company, trust units, a partnership share or a loan to a relative. That figure supports the estate accounts, fixes cost bases for pre-CGT assets and becomes the evidence if a family maintenance claim reaches the Supreme Court of Tasmania.
Once the Supreme Court of Tasmania grants probate or letters of administration, the executor or administrator holds the estate's assets and must later show the beneficiaries how each one was dealt with. Money in the bank and listed shares carry their own price. The assets that make up most of a sizeable Hobart estate usually do not: shares in a family company running a Moonah joinery, units in a trust that owns a Battery Point guesthouse, a half share in an accounting partnership in the city, or money advanced years ago to help a daughter buy into a cafe.
If a value turns out to be wrong, the executor answers for it personally. Divide the estate on a value nobody can support, let a family member take the company for less than it is worth, or keep no record of how a number was reached, and a beneficiary can bring proceedings to make the executor good the shortfall. Complaints like this tend to surface late, often when an asset is resold at a much higher price a year or two after distribution.
Most families want the administration finished quickly and cheaply, so a valuation can look like an optional extra. It is modest next to what it prevents: an amended assessment from the ATO, siblings who stop speaking, or a claim under the Testator's Family Maintenance Act 1912 (Tas) that gathers strength because nobody can say what the estate was worth.
We act for executors, administrators and estate lawyers across greater Hobart and the rest of Tasmania, including estates where the Public Trustee (Tasmania) or a trustee company is the executor and wants an arm's length figure on file. Consultations are by video call and phone. We never take instructions from one beneficiary alone, so every beneficiary, and the Court if it comes to that, works from the same number.
A certified valuer will listen to your situation and answer any questions you may have, at no cost.
Many estates never need a formal valuation, and those that do usually need one for only a handful of assets. The estate lawyer settles what forms part of the estate and the date each asset is measured at; the valuer then supplies a market value that can be defended for anything without an observable price. The request tends to arrive at one of four points.
The inventory, the executor's accounts to the beneficiaries and any later claim all begin with what the deceased held on that day and what it was worth. Each private company shareholding, trust or partnership interest, trading business, parcel of land, piece of intellectual property, loan to a relative and collection needs a figure fixed as at that date.
A sale to a son, a niece or the deceased's sister has never been tested in the open market, so the agreed price proves little. A valuation obtained before the contract answers any later claim that the asset went cheaply, and it is the evidence the ATO expects behind a price agreed between related parties. Where land or a land-holding company changes hands, the State Revenue Office of Tasmania may also need to consider duty under the Duties Act 2001 (Tas).
If one beneficiary takes the business or the company shares and the others take the house or cash, comparing the parcels shows whether the will has been carried out as the deceased intended. Where values have moved since the death, fairness between the beneficiaries is judged at the date of distribution.
A claim under the Testator's Family Maintenance Act 1912 (Tas) asks the Supreme Court of Tasmania whether the will made adequate provision for the applicant's proper maintenance and support. The Court cannot answer that without knowing what the estate holds and what it is worth, so the valuation becomes expert evidence and has to be prepared to the Court's standard.
Start with each asset's CGT history. A death does not of itself trigger capital gains tax, but it does decide the cost base each beneficiary inherits. Where the deceased acquired an asset before 20 September 1985, the beneficiary takes it with a cost base equal to its market value on the date of death, so our figure sets the taxable gain on any future sale. For assets acquired on or after that date, the deceased's own cost base passes across and the date-of-death figure serves the administration rather than the tax return. The tax adviser does the sorting, and the depth of our work follows it.
The deceased may have run the family trust in every practical way, as appointor, as director of the trustee company and as the person who decided each distribution, yet a discretionary beneficiary owns none of the trust's property. What the estate may hold is the shares in the trustee company or the power to appoint a replacement, not the rental house or the Derwent Valley vineyard business the trust owns. Listing trust property as estate property is among the most expensive errors we see, and the estate lawyer should settle the point before the valuation is scoped.
The standard is market value: the price a willing, informed buyer and a willing, informed seller would agree at arm's length on the valuation date, with neither forced to deal. For a trading company or a private business the income approach normally leads, capitalising the earnings the business can sustain once the accounts are normalised. The market approach tests that result against sales of comparable businesses, while the asset approach sets the floor and leads for entities that mostly hold land or investments, or that will be wound up rather than sold.
The first problem particular to estates is a business that has lost its principal. If the deceased was the surgeon whose referrals kept a specialist practice near the Royal Hobart Hospital busy, the partner who brought the clients to a Hobart CBD law firm, or the owner whose relationships with the salmon farms kept a Huon Valley marine services business in work, part of the earnings ended with them. We separate goodwill that remains with the staff, systems, contracts and premises from goodwill that was personal, and value what remains at the date of death, using only what was known or reasonably foreseeable at that time. Later trading can show what was foreseeable; it is never a licence to value with hindsight.
The second is a minority parcel of family company shares. Sold to an outsider, a parcel with no say in management and no ready buyer would normally attract a discount, but passed to the sister who already holds most of the shares, it completes her control and the case for a discount largely falls away. The report gives both figures with reasons, and the executor and the estate lawyer decide which applies. Where a shareholders agreement fixes a price on death, we show that price beside market value, because the contract may settle what the estate receives without settling what the ATO accepts.
Estates that reach us already in trouble can usually trace the problem to one of these.
Match the report to the people who will read it and how hard they are likely to push back. An estate administered by the Public Trustee (Tasmania) with every beneficiary in agreement needs a lighter document than one answering a Testator's Family Maintenance Act claim in the Supreme Court of Tasmania.
The report opens with the valuation date, the standard of value, the material we relied on and every assumption we made, so a reader can see what the figure rests on. It then walks through the approaches we considered, each adjustment to the accounts, how personal goodwill was dealt with, any discount for a minority or hard-to-sell holding, and why the approaches were weighted as they were. If the estate needs two figures, for example a pro rata value and a discounted one, or a contract price and market value, we give both and explain when each applies.
In a contested Tasmanian estate the report is prepared to meet Part 19 of the Supreme Court Rules 2000 (Tas) and the Expert Witness Code of Conduct attached to the Court's Practice Direction No 1 of 2016, under which the expert's first duty is to the Supreme Court of Tasmania, not to whoever pays the fee. A report that both sides can read as even-handed carries more weight than one written to win. The certified valuer who signed it will meet the other side's expert if the Court directs, help settle a statement of what is agreed and what is not, and give evidence if required. Most estates settle well before a hearing, usually because a credible figure was available early.
Imagine a beneficiary takes this distribution to the Supreme Court of Tasmania several years from now. Which document would show how each figure was set? If the honest answer is a guess, a council rates notice or an email from the family's accountant, the estate has no protection.
Talk your situation through with a certified valuer before you commit to anything, at no cost.