Full house clearance

After a death, the contents of the home form part of the estate. The executor named in the will, or the administrator if there is no will, is responsible for them. Relatives who want an item should ask the executor rather than take it, and the clearance firm should take instructions from the executor only. If several family members are executors together, agree in writing who deals with the clearance.

When someone moves into care and is still able to decide, the choices are theirs. If they no longer have capacity, in England and Wales a person holding a registered lasting power of attorney for property and financial affairs, or a deputy appointed by the court, acts for them; Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own equivalents. A clearance firm cannot sort out a family disagreement, so settle who decides before booking.

Before applying for probate, the executor has to value the estate for Inheritance Tax, and HMRC's guidance lists household and personal items, such as furniture, antiques, jewellery, paintings and electrical goods, as part of that value. Most household contents are worth little on the open market, but a single painting, piece of jewellery, stamp collection or antique can change the picture.

Record the contents before clearance, with photographs, and get anything that might be valuable looked at by an auctioneer or valuer who is independent of the clearance firm. If the firm offers to buy items or to set their value against its price, ask for that in writing and item by item. The executor must be able to show later that the estate got a fair value.

• the name of the executor or attorney giving instructions
• items the family is keeping, marked clearly or already removed
• items for auction, sale or valuation, and who arranges it
• what goes to charity or reuse and which charity
• an itemised credit for anything the firm buys
• search for documents, keys, cash and jewellery during the clearance
• the firm's waste carrier registration and the final state of the house

Older people often keep important papers in unexpected places: bank statements in a biscuit tin, share certificates in a book, cash in a coat pocket. Go through every room, drawer and bag for wills, insurance and pension documents, premium bonds, bank cards, keys, photographs and letters before the clearance.

Ask the firm to set aside any papers, cash, jewellery or photographs it finds and hand them over, rather than throwing them out. A respectful firm does this routinely. It is worth agreeing in advance what happens to personal letters and photographs nobody claims.

Good furniture, kitchenware, books and linen can go to charity shops or furniture reuse projects, many of which collect. A charity that collects household items must itself be on the waste carrier register. Charity shops usually need the fire safety label to be present before they can accept upholstered furniture, and sofas and armchairs that are thrown away must be handled as waste containing persistent organic pollutants. Mattresses are not covered by that rule, but they are bulky and awkward to dispose of.

Electrical items go to recycling routes for waste electrical equipment. Garden sheds and garages add paint tins, chemicals, old fuel and sometimes asbestos cement sheets, which need separate handling. Tell the firm about anything like this at the survey.

Families often feel pressure to clear a house quickly, but there is rarely a legal reason to clear it before the valuation is done and the family has taken what it wants. The deadline usually comes from a sale, the end of a rental or the cost of heating and insuring an empty property.

Tell the home insurer when a house becomes unoccupied; many policies have conditions for empty properties, such as regular inspections or draining the water system. A clearance leaves the house even more obviously empty, so keep curtains or blinds up until the end and cancel deliveries.

Some full clearances involve a home where possessions have built up over many years. These need more time, more care and sometimes protective equipment where there is mould, pests or waste. If the person still lives there, clearance should happen with them, not around them, often in stages and with support from family, the GP or social services. A firm that promises to empty a hoarded house in one day without discussing this is not the right one.

Tell us about the property, the contents and who is dealing with the estate. We confirm your phone and email and then show the request, with no names attached, to clearance firms nearby. Only one company can buy it, and it is the only one that will contact you. Before it does, we send you its name, address and phone number. There is no charge for you, and you do not have to accept the quote.