Cash in the house counts in the estate inventory

Money you find in the house is an asset. It belongs on the estate inventory, even if it lay in a drawer, an envelope or a safe and never appeared on a bank statement. Create a line on the day you count. Put the amount, the currency, the place where you found it and the date of the count. Preferably count with two people present. Note both names. That makes it possible later to follow who saw which amount. If a second person is not possible, you write that too: counted by one person, the reason and the date. You do not leave the money out because the count feels awkward.

The amount of the count is not automatically the value on the morning of the date of death. Between the death and the day of the count, something may already have been paid, or an envelope may have been moved. Ask about that and note the reply as a fact. If you can no longer reconstruct the balance on the date of death, you put the count down as value now, with the day of the count, and you leave the value on the date of death empty. A reconstruction you still make, you mark as an estimate with names and a date. You do not invent a starting amount just to fill the date of death after all. Empty, with an explanation, is more useful than a round figure.

The same day, write down where the money is going. Whether paying it into the existing account is allowed, you ask the bank, because an account can be blocked. Until that reply is there, you note where the money stays physically: a safe, the notary, or a new account of the estate once that exists. If it goes to an account, you link the later credit to this cash line, so you do not count it twice as an asset. Spending from the cash is a payment, with a date and an invoice. The cash asset falls by the same amount. Without that counter-entry, money disappears from the list without a trace.

An envelope with a name on it is not yet a gift and not yet a legacy (legaat). You do count the amount, and you note the text on the envelope as a fact, with the date of the count. Whether that text is a last will, you do not judge on the estate-inventory line. That is a question for the notary, with the paper as an attachment. Until that interpretation, the money remains an asset of the count. You do not take it out of the estate inventory in advance because the family wants to follow the text. You note that wish as context. The list keeps the amount visible, with the place it was found, the names of the people who counted and the date.

Counting cash is not a valuation and not tax advice. Ervazo does not fill in the amount. The source is the count: names, date, place, and where the money stayed afterwards. The bank is the source once the amount has been credited on a statement. What the Belastingdienst makes of this money, you do not ask of this line, and you do not infer it from the find. Until the count is on paper, the item must not exist only in a memory. An empty field is better than an amount that nobody counted.