I imagine that, in the absence of inheritance tax, the only reason for valuing an estate before 1858 was to ensure the executors entered into a bond for a sufficient surety to make certain that they did their work honestly. If the original will is not extant and there is no inventory and no separate letters of administration, there would be no way of finding out the value of the estate. In any case, only moveable chattels would be valued. Tim Powys-Lybbe noted: > I wonder if the word 'real' derived from 'royal' No, it derives from the Latin "res", meaning that the thing itself could be awarded in judgement - if you agreed to sell land and did not hand over possession, the courts could demand that you handed it over "really". The opposite is "personal", where the thing could not be given in judgement, but merely damages. ("Real" may indeed have the other meaning, in "real tennis" or "Real Madrid", but that's different from real estate! Hector Davie