Think Like a Diplomat, Listen Like a Shrink: An Appraiser’s Tips for Successfully Navigating Emotionally-Charged Assignments
The fight was over Mom’s 1957 ceramic egg cup. Two sisters, who I am told had been formerly inseparable, were on that day speaking to each other only through their disabled brother. He was beside himself.
One said, “Mom ate from that thing every blasted morning, and she said to me that it would be mine one day when I was 10!” I heard this spoken as my head was down in boxes of objects in the speaker’s late mother’s home in Santa Barbara, California. I was charged with writing an appraisal for equitable distribution. A delicate situation indeed: I had valued the egg cup at $2, but it appeared its worth was far, far greater.
Sarah Reeder, AAA’s recent article in Worthwhile Magazine™ emphasized that we appraisers are called upon to practice our skills with the same foresight and diligence as would a family’s lawyer or accountant. In light of the appraiser’s skill set and the many complex factors involved, and remembering my sticky situation with two sisters and the egg cup, I believe we have another discipline to add to the list. While this is outside of our stated scope of work and the professional service we officially provide, appraisers are often called upon by our clients to be an ad-hoc judicious family counselor of sorts. In certain situations, usually involving mortality, we are tasked to find worth in personal property without adding to the emotionally heated temperature of a trying time in a family’s life. In other words, we labor to help a family divide property in such a manner that we are not further dividing the family.
About those Santa Barbara sisters: one of them is still my client today, and I have written appraisals for purposes other than equitable distribution for her and her family as the years roll on. Her other sister possesses the egg cup and has not spoken with her sister in 5 years. If you are an appraiser who has visited a family home for the purposes of an estate appraisal or an appraisal for equitable distribution, read on; I promise you that you’ll recognize yourself in my words.
“We labor to help a family divide property in such a manner that we are not further dividing the family. ”
Appraisers are in the business of worth, which is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary when used as a noun as “the value equivalent to that of something under consideration; the level at which something deserves to be valued.” You will note that “worth” has a sister word, which is “value,” which differs in definition and often in usage. Typically used as a verb, value is “an estimate of the monetary worth of something.” Therefore “what’s it worth?” might be best asked in this format: “for how much money is it valued?” And in the watery channel that divides these two words, we appraisers are called upon to recognize certain core beliefs about personal self-recognition in our clients.
My doctoral work in Material Culture was underpinned by an emphasis in Depth Psychology, the Schools of Freud and Jung, and both eminent psychologists had much to say about self-realization and core beliefs. We as appraisers see these core beliefs reflected in objects, and how people relate to those objects. And it is here that we must exercise the kind of diplomacy and active listening skills practiced by the best psychologists!
As professional appraisers, our work products of appraisal reports written in compliance with the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP) are grounded in careful research, documented market data, and an assessment of appraised objects in a financial context. However, for our clients, their appraised objects often exist within a simultaneous spectrum of emotional value that is very real and powerful for them. Learning where these objects are currently situated in the market in a financial context removed from their significant sentimental associations can be very upsetting and challenging for some people to comprehend, especially during a time of grief.
“Learning where these objects are currently situated in the market in a financial context removed from their significant sentimental associations can be very upsetting and challenging for some people to comprehend, especially during a time of grief.”
When appraisers negotiate the divide between worth and value, we often swim in the waters of a family’s deeply-held beliefs about objects that often are not stated overtly but surface in client interactions, especially during trying times. How then may we best prepare ourselves and also best prepare a family who has hired you to write an appraisal for equitable distribution or an estate appraisal after a loved one has died? The key is in the action I stated: “to prepare.” Experience helps of course. And therefore, I will illustrate and state a few of my own experiences as an appraiser that shaped the ideas in this article. You will also find my 10 tips for preparation for such situations.
When I write an appraisal for equitable distribution, often my clients are older parents of grown children, usually a few grown children, who have spouses and children of their own. Each member of the three generations to which your appraisal may be directed has their own different ideas of worth versus value. And while an appraisal report has specific intended users, once your appraisal report has been submitted, the parent may still decide to share your report with other family members not identified as intended users in the report. Those family members may also have their own individual, separate, and often unstated beliefs about worth and value. Is worth “money?” Is worth sentiment? Is worth gendered? Is the worth that you as an appraiser are looking for predetermined by your (older parent) client’s tales about the object and its provenance? [To be clear, the answer to that question is no. Appraisers are independent and objective. While provenance can have an impact on value, the client’s personal esteem for an object does not and should not impact a professional appraiser’s services.] Should you as an appraiser steer clear of any “worth” outside of monetary value? How do you acknowledge the intrinsic emotional worth of an object to a family as a whole, or to an individual?
We are in a business field called “valuation services.” As professional appraisers, we are trained that an appraisal necessarily focuses on monetary value, but working for a family often puts us in situations where family members may not approach concepts of worth and value from the same perspective we do as appraisers. I suggest that we should understand this polarity to deal efficiently with the questions you will be receiving as an appraiser in the field. I have compiled my list of tools with which I arm myself, to head off sticky situations in trying times for a family. In addition to tools and preparation, heading off these sticky situations also often requires foresight and mediation skills.
Ten Tips for Successfully Navigating Emotionally-Charged Appraisal Assignments
1. When I get the call to write an appraisal for equitable distribution, I ask that the older parents shoot a video with their smartphone, leading me on a narrated tour around their home. I ask for provenance, family history, acquisition history, and meaning of significant objects to them. So I can understand the degree to which the client believes in value, I ask them to estimate the perceived value of these objects. I ask them to spend no more than one hour on this tour. This video prepares me to understand the beliefs the clients hold around their relationships to those objects so I can best advise them on the format the appraisal should take. Would they like me to list fair market value after my written catalog description of each object, and then a separate paragraph regarding family history? (This is of course when family history, as it so often does, does not add to the value of the object. May I rely on apocryphal family history from the mouth of the client? When there is no accompanying documentation to support family histories, I record the volunteered provenance within the appraisal report for archival purposes but do not assume or rely on it to be correct).
If I learn in the video that the parents are not comfortable stating the value of certain objects for fear their children might quarrel, I might suggest that the appraisal limit its intended users to just the parents. In a situation like this, the parents might like their children to receive another appraisal written with a different scope of work that does not include monetary value. This is often a great tool, because the kids are then encouraged to decide on what they actually want without totaling dollars amongst each other.
What I am driving at is to find what the clients believe the word “equitable” actually means to them so that the most appropriate appraisal scope of work for their situation can be identified. Does “equitable” for them mean equal value of objects between all heirs? Is it that each heir gets a slice of family history in equal shares? I once had a client with a 24-place setting Meissen porcelain table service, which of course was worth more if it was kept as a service for 24. This did not matter to her because she wanted each heir to have part of the family history of the service, so she divided it into 4 separate services for 6 to each of her 4 kids.
Plate, circa 1745, Meissen Manufactory (German, 1710-present), hard-paste porcelain, 9 1/2 inches diameter, Metropolitan Museum of Art collection, Open Access
2. I suggest that you encourage your clients, when writing an appraisal for equitable distribution, to start thinking about the “divvying up” early in the game, before you actually present them with comparable sales. In my own professional experiences recently, I have witnessed how the pandemic’s dire undercurrent of impending mortality has significantly influenced thoughts about family history vs. value. In my client conversations, I hear that some parents do not want the kids involved and I have also heard that the only child to be involved will be the “responsible” one. This helps me determine my list of appraisal intended users, as well as the appraisal report format.
As professional appraisers, we are thrust into often tense situations incorporating complex family dynamics and many years of background context we don’t always have knowledge of. In fact, in an evolving conversation over time, one family came to the realization that they did not want the facts of the appraisal to be anywhere in the vicinity of their children, but they were completely comfortable with sharing the appraisal with grandkids. You will note that in the happiest of families, the halcyon days of togetherness are often shattered upon death, especially if involving objects of high value or sentiment. These situations involve that we listen diplomatically, not judgmentally, as we will find strong emotions involved underneath the words.
Sometimes in these cases, it can be helpful to involve the client’s trust attorney. The attorney, the parents, and I have often sat together around the law firm’s conference table and hammered out intended users as well as the scope of work. It is important to remember that as appraisers we are not qualified to give legal advice and should always direct the client to their attorney for all legal matters.
3. Similarly, it is critical to understand that in inheritance matters, that there are technical issues regarding taxes and laws that you are not qualified to speak about as an appraiser. That is why I often am asked to sit with the family accountant to discuss gifting objects in the appraisal for equitable distribution while the parent is still alive, and this of course involves capital gain and other thorny tax issues. These are scope-of-work issues that should be left to our affiliated professional services of law and accounting, and it can be useful to work closely with the client’s legal and tax professionals for their expert guidance to make sure the appraisal scope of work is the best fit for the client’s specific situation.
4. You will hear this: “We just want to be fair.” But it is up to you to sense the tenor of what your (elderly parent) client means by “fairness.” Is fairness equitability? Is fairness “payback?” Ask whom they have chosen as executor and if this person will be an intended user. Will the executor understand the scope of your appraisal report? Do you understand the scope before you begin to write? Another important element to consider is whether the executor, who will have this appraisal report from you long after you have signed it, understands the concept of “intended users.” Furthermore, even though your report is dated in time with the appraisal report’s specific effective date, it will be used in the future, perhaps in ways outside of the stated intended use.
Flowers in a Metal Vase. Creator: Abraham Mignon. Date:1670. Institution: Mauritshuis. Provider: Digitale Collectie. Providing Country: Netherlands. PD for Public Domain Mark, via Unsplash
Understanding what submerged resentments and familial scars your clients are bringing to the process is critical to know how best to structure the report intended use and intended users (and also to protect yourself as an appraiser by preventing clients and family members from misinterpreting the report). This is a fantastic opportunity to thoroughly educate your clients and resolve any misconceptions they may have about how appraisal report intended users and intended users work for professional appraisers, outside of more emotionally laden concepts of fairness and ‘payback.” (Want an example of payback? Following soon upon the heels of the statement “I just want to be fair,” one client stated that the one son who never ever called, should be given the least valuable of all her paintings...)
5. Attempt to understand the worth of childhood objects to certain heirs (like with my eggcup experience!) if heirs are to be intended users because the heirs’ personal concept of (sentimental) worth may not be connected with value at all. Now it is up to you to explain that you are writing a Fair Market Value Appraisal, and that means Fair Market Value does not take family sentiment into consideration. You are not the bad guy. Again, you may have been in such a situation as this conversation: “Really appraiser? You don’t know your job. I’m certain that XX’s value is worth more than you state. Mom always said I was never to sell it for any price....” Here, you will be preparing yourself to speak to the questioner about the difference between sentimental worth and financial value...
6. Consider that your clients might want separate appraisal documents for separate heirs, with separate intended users. If there are multiple heirs, sometimes it is pure diplomacy not to have all be intended users on one single appraisal report for estate purposes. This has ramifications for the future as well: you must write in your scope of work that your clients desired this of you; you must state your intended users, and believe me, this will be helpful in the future when four kids, who once were perfect friends, are now perfect enemies.
7. There will be objects that the client will either want to donate or should donate; the latter because the heirs hate certain objects, or because the market for them is terrible. Suggest that your clients speak to their accountant about the tax guidelines of a donation (remember this is not an area appraisers are qualified to provide guidance about!) Your clients’ discussion with their accountant may involve questions about donating certain objects now versus in a certain tax year while they are still alive, and the different sets of tax ramifications of gifting while alive vs. gifting upon death. Although you are not qualified to opine on such matters, by referring your client to an accountant who is qualified to provide this specific guidance, they will receive the expert information needed to confirm the best scope of work for your appraisal services.
And finally, ask your clients what they would freely give to charity without a deduction. You may be writing an appraisal report, now you have the above information confirmed following the clients’ consultation with their accountant, for a noncash charitable contribution for federal tax purposes. And of course, because your donation appraisal must fall into certain time limits of valuation, make sure the client understands that appraisals for other purposes are not interchangeable with this very specific type of appraisal. (Your client may not understand that there is a difference between the appraisal purposes and the valuation methodology. I have been continuously surprised when clients ask if they can use a replacement cost appraisal for insurance purposes for an 8283 filing no matter how much prohibitive language I have put stating this is not possible or appropriate in the cover letter.) Also, I have been equally shocked by heirs, when they receive a Fair Market Value appraisal for estate purposes, who have compared my valuations with the parent’s insurance company schedules (some of which increase yearly without the client actually paying much attention).
My major point: Educating your clients at the beginning of the process is critical so they have a thorough understanding of exactly what level of the market their report will be prepared for, what their appraisal report can be used for, and (perhaps most importantly) what it can’t be used for. Follow up your words with specific written language within your appraisal report to make these distinctions clear as well to future readers of the report, especially if they are unintended users.
8. When you begin the process of the dissolution of a household with a family, suggest that your clients parcel the house into five easy piles, especially if you have older clients on the verge of retirement who have asked for your help pursuant to an eventual appraisal for equitable distribution:
a. What objects do your clients perceive as being worth more than $XXX dollars? May these be candidates for heirs?
b. What objects over $XXX may be candidates for donation purposes? This is an important question if a house is soon to be sold, and here you ask them to ask their accountant about taxes and donations upon the sale of valuable property. Again, appraisers are not qualified to advise about tax issues, and as a best practice, we should direct clients to their own accountant to provide them with expert qualified guidance for their specific situation.
c. What objects are sentimental only?
d. What objects are “household” (depreciable) only?
e. What objects have the potential increase in worth over time? (Note I used the word worth, which catches in its basket the perceived value of a family’s historical objects, as well as monetary value.)
f. Now suggest that they document their selection in those five piles in photographs and suggest that it is perfectly natural for them to have an “I don’t know what to do with this stuff” pile. And it is also OK to add to the coffers of the local storage locker company.
9. Think like a diplomat and listen like a shrink. Listen, and opine when your opinion is qualified. Be patient. When possible, talk on the phone rather than email, especially in the case of a family loss. When you speak in person, be respectful of how challenging this process can be for grieving individuals and give the family member time to share stories about how their loved one lived with the objects.
10. Understand the concept stated in the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP) of the importance of public trust in our profession. Clearly explaining to our clients about the different types and levels of value and helping them identify what scope of work would best meet their needs establishes transparency in the appraisal process and builds trust. Interpersonal trust is also important in helping a family divide and value personal property (worth/value/sentiment/meaning) without dividing the family itself. Think in context. Trust is thereby established judiciously and invaluably.
The information in this article is for general informational purposes only and is not considered legal advice or a legal opinion. In addition, topics may not necessarily reflect the most current economic, legal, and appraisal developments. Verify sources independently and seek the advice of an appropriate professional if needed.
Elizabeth Stewart, PhD, AAA is the owner of Elizabeth Appraisals in Santa Barbara, California and a Certified Member of the Appraisers Association of America. You can visit her website at https://elizabethappraisals.com.
Elizabeth Stewart photographed by Santi Visalli
© Elizabeth Stewart, PhD, AAA 2021