Six Condition Grades That Change How Heirs Think About an Inheritance

Ask three siblings what condition the family dining table is in and you will get three answers. One will say "good — it has been in the house forever." One will say "fair — look at all the marks on it." One will say "needs restoring." None of them are wrong. They simply have no shared vocabulary, so they each invent one — and then they argue about a table.

Almost every painful estate conversation contains a hidden disagreement about condition. Should we sell it? Restore it? Pass it down? Donate it? Each of those answers depends on a condition assessment that nobody has actually written down. Heriteo asks every object to carry one of six grades — New, Like New, Excellent, Good, Fair, Poor — and the discipline of choosing one quietly resolves a surprising number of family arguments before they happen.

What the six grades actually mean

The grades aren't appraisal-grade jargon — they're meant to be readable by the cousin who has never thought about valuation in their life. Here is the rough convention.

New

Never used, original packaging where applicable. Almost nothing in a family home is genuinely New, and that's important — using the grade sparingly keeps it meaningful.

Like New

Used very lightly, no visible wear, often the second-most-valuable grade after New for resale and the most surprising one to apply to a "kept-in-the-cupboard" wedding gift that has never actually been used.

Excellent

Minor signs of use, well maintained, presents beautifully. The grade most family pieces land on if they have been looked after — a sideboard polished annually, a watch serviced regularly, a rug rotated and vacuumed.

Good

Normal wear consistent with age and use. The honest grade for the everyday objects of a lived-in home. Good is not a downgrade from Excellent — it is the difference between an object that has been lived with and one that has been lived around.

Fair

Noticeable wear, cosmetic imperfections, still functional. A Fair grade does not mean an heir should not want the object; it means the next conversation has to include "do we restore it, accept it, or release it?"

Poor

Significant damage or heavy wear. Poor is sometimes the right grade for the object that matters most — the rocking chair the grandchildren broke and someone glued back together twice. Sentiment can outweigh condition; the grade just makes sure the family knows it is.

Why the grade changes the answer to "what do we do with it?"

Once an object has a grade, the decisions downstream get faster. An Excellent object goes to whichever heir most wants it; an Excellent object that nobody wants is a strong sale candidate. A Fair object usually has to be discussed — restoration cost vs sentimental weight is an actual conversation, not a vague one. A Poor object that is also Sacred (see our piece on the five emotional values) is the family heirloom that needs explicit protection — because to anyone outside the household, Poor condition reads as "throw away."

We have seen this play out repeatedly: families argue about what to do with an object when the underlying disagreement is about what condition it is in. Once the condition is agreed and visible, the downstream decision often becomes obvious to everyone at once.

Condition is what an estate sale appraiser sees first

If part of an estate is going to be sold, the family's condition assessment is the first thing the buyer or appraiser will challenge. A documented grade — with a photo of the wear, a one-line note ("water damage to lower drawer, 1998 storm") and a date — is worth a real amount of negotiating power. It also protects heirs from the awkward moment of finding out that the "antique" they remember as pristine has been Fair for years.

For families who are about to manage an estate sale, the condition record is one of the most useful artefacts they can bring to the appraiser. We covered the broader question of when to keep versus sell an inherited piece separately — condition is the input that makes that question answerable.

Condition is also a heatmap of where to spend attention

Heriteo's dashboard turns the per-object grade into a distribution: how much of the family's catalogue is Good or above, how much is Fair or worse, how much hasn't been assessed at all. A family that has fifteen percent of its catalogue in Fair or Poor condition has a maintenance and decision queue waiting for it. One that has eighty percent in Excellent or above has a different problem: nothing is wrong, but the conversation about distribution can no longer be deferred on the basis that "we'll deal with it when there's a reason to."

If you are looking at the dashboard for the first time and seeing a lot of grey "unassessed" objects, our piece on what most administrative plans forget covers a sensible order of operations for closing those gaps.

How Heriteo records and uses condition

Every object in Heriteo can carry a condition grade with an optional note and any number of close-up wear photographs. The grade flows into:

• the dashboard, which shows distribution across the catalogue and flags unassessed objects;
• the object review, where heirs can filter by condition to find everything Fair or worse for a maintenance pass;
• decisions and intentions, where condition gives weight to "Sell now," "Restore," or "Keep in family";
• sale outcomes, where the condition snapshot at decision time is preserved as evidence.

The grade is a single field. The discipline of choosing one is the work.

Condition is one field on a larger record. It belongs alongside photos and valuations in a proper home inventory for estate planning, and it is one of the items on an executor's checklist for personal property.

Condition is the most boring of the six grades a household can apply to its objects, and the one that quietly removes the most family friction. Three siblings looking at the same grade are no longer arguing about the table. They are deciding what to do with it — which is, at last, a useful conversation.