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Just Because It Can Be Touched Doesn’t Mean It’s Tangible

Bequests in the News

September 5, 2025

Defining tangible personal property

When a donor leaves behind a charitable bequest, the language sometimes includes “all [my] personal property.”

That language is clear and covers (unless specifically designated for others) cars, bank accounts, furniture, artwork, collectibles, stocks, bonds, and the dog. It would also include cash, significant amounts of which sometimes surface in a decedent’s former residence and occasionally even “under the mattress.”

But what if the bequest language is “all my tangible personal property”? Is cash (i.e., actual bills and coins) tangible personal property?

That was the issue in Estate of Williams, 680 S.W.3d 365 (Tenn. App. 2023). The decedent’s will left “all tangible personal property” to his spouse. During the spouse’s inspection of the decedent’s home, she discovered $21,000 in cash. She subsequently filed a claim against the estate for the money, arguing that it was tangible personal property. The trial court entered an order finding that the cash was intangible personal property. The ruling was affirmed on appeal. The rationale of the Tennessee decision, and similar cases in other states, is that like stock certificates and records of bank accounts, cash has no intrinsic value; it is just evidence of a right to receive value. Also in accord are the highly respected Restatement of Property and a host of fire-insurance litigation cases where the policy covered “tangible personal property.” The cash went up in smoke, and the insured received no compensation.

BEQUEST MANAGEMENT LESSON:

Awareness of this distinction may be useful when the “tangible personal property” language turns up in matured or intended bequests.

It would be difficult to convince someone who lost her (cash) life savings in a fire that cash has no intrinsic value. Curiously, cash can morph from intangible to tangible while it is marinating under someone’s mattress. Consider a $1 bill issued in the 1940s that suddenly generated rabid interest among coin collectors in the 1990s. For the first fifty years of its existence, it was just a dollar (hence intangible). Now it is a collectible and therefore tangible. Just something to think about!