annual · 2026-05-25

The Heirloom Gap Index — 2026

An Annual Research Report from The Touchstone Report Editorial Team. Published May 25, 2026.

Executive Summary

American households hold an estimated $1.4 trillion in heirloom-adjacent assets — jewelry, precious metals, watches, and signed collectibles. Less than 12% of that value is governed by a documented transfer mechanism. Most of it sits in drawers, safes, and bank boxes with no specific bequest, no named beneficiary, no current appraisal, and no instructions for the people who will inherit it.

The Heirloom Gap — defined as the share of household heirloom-adjacent value that is not documented in a will, trust, beneficiary designation, personal property memorandum, or equivalent transfer instrument — is 88% at the national level in our 2026 baseline. State and demographic cuts move that figure inside a range from 71% (highest-documented cohort) to 94% (lowest).

This is the first edition of the index. Numbers in this report are triangulated from publicly available household-asset estimates: the Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances (2022 wave, partial 2024 release), World Gold Council household gold consumption and stock estimates, IRS Statistics of Income Form 706 tangible personal property data, the American Bar Association Estate Planning Survey 2024, and the AARP Estate Planning Attitudes Survey 2023, with industry data from JCK Online, the Federal Trade Commission's jewelry trade compliance filings, and IBISWorld jewelry-industry reports. We do not yet have a primary-source survey of our own; that is the principal reason every headline number in this v1 carries a confidence interval rather than a point estimate.

Why the gap matters. Undocumented heirlooms produce three measurable downstream effects: (1) heir disputes — the ABA estimates roughly 38% of estate litigation involves disagreement over tangible personal property [1]; (2) under-distribution — heirlooms are routinely sold for melt or scrap value rather than passed down, destroying the generational premium that branded, signed, or provenance-rich items carry; (3) tax under-reporting — executors routinely omit assets they don't know exist, exposing the estate and themselves to IRS adjustment under IRC §6662.

The Heirloom Gap is not a problem of wealth. It is a problem of information. The gold is in the house. The will is in a drawer. The two are not connected.

This is the 2026 baseline. v2 will be published in May 2027 following a 1,500-respondent national survey (fielding Q3 2026), at which point the confidence interval on every headline number narrows, state-level breakouts become primary data rather than triangulated estimates, and the demographic cuts gain a fourth dimension (race/ethnicity) we cannot defensibly include from public sources alone.

Headline Findings

The numbers below are point estimates from our triangulation methodology (described in full in Methodology, p. 4). Ranges in brackets are the 95% confidence interval given source-data variance and our weighting choices. Estimates carry the marker [E] where the figure is our derived estimate rather than a directly published statistic from a primary source.

Total estimated heirloom-adjacent assets in U.S. households: $1.4 trillion [$1.1T – $1.7T, 95% CI]. [E] Triangulated from World Gold Council Gold Demand Trends Full Year 2024 household stock estimates [2], Federal Reserve SCF 2022 "other residential property and other nonfinancial assets" with tangible-personal-property carve-out [3], and IBISWorld Jewelry Stores in the US 2025 installed-base extrapolation [4].
Households with at least one heirloom-grade item: ~82% [78% – 86%]. Defined as one item with estimated fair-market value above $500 in jewelry, precious metals, watches, or signed collectibles. Derived from SCF "other nonfinancial assets" prevalence [3] and AARP 2023 "do you own jewelry of sentimental or financial value" question [5].
Households with at least one heirloom DOCUMENTED by name in a will, trust, or memorandum: ~12% [9% – 15%]. [E] Combines ABA 2024 specific-bequest prevalence [1] with AARP 2023 self-reported "items mentioned by name in my will" question [5], adjusted downward for the well-documented gap between self-reported and actual specific-bequest behavior (Wealth Counsel Estate Planning Awareness Report 2023 [6]).
Median estimated heirloom value per household holding any: $14,200 [$11,800 – $17,600]. [E] Derived from SCF means by quintile [3] redistributed against AARP prevalence data [5]. This is gross heirloom-adjacent value, not net of debt, and excludes primary residence and titled vehicles.
Households where the named executor or next-of-kin could correctly identify the location and approximate value of all heirlooms: ~9% [6% – 13%]. [E] Inferred from the AARP question "do members of your family know what valuable items you own and where they are kept" combined with our adjustment for the documented gap between owner self-report and heir actual-knowledge (Cornell Legal Information Institute survey synthesis [7]).
Five states with the highest absolute gap (CA, TX, FL, NY, PA): combined ~$520 billion in undocumented heirloom value. [E] Per-state estimate from SCF state-level wealth distribution [3], Census American Community Survey household counts [8], and per-household heirloom prevalence assumed uniform absent state-level survey data. This assumption is the single largest source of error in the state-level figures and is the principal target of the v2 survey.
Five states with the highest documentation gap by percentage: MS, AL, WV, AR, KY — all >91%. [E] Inverse correlation with estate-planning attorney access per capita (American Bar Association 2024 lawyer demographics [9]) and median household income (Census ACS [8]).
Households over age 65 with at least one documented heirloom: ~18% — the highest cohort. [E] Combines AARP 2023 age cuts [5] with ABA Estate Planning Survey 2024 age breakouts [1]. Still represents a >80% gap in the demographic with the most assets and the shortest documentation horizon.
Households age 35-50 with at least one documented heirloom: ~7% — the lowest cohort outside Gen Z. [E] Same source synthesis. This cohort holds an estimated 22% of total heirloom-adjacent value but accounts for only 9% of documented heirlooms.
Estimated annual heirloom value "destroyed" — sold for melt or scrap when the documented preference would have been retention: ~$18 billion [$12B – $26B]. [E] Derived from US cash-for-gold industry revenue (IBISWorld [4]) cross-referenced against industry mix of melt versus resale destination data.

Methodology

Triangulation, not measurement

This v1 of the Heirloom Gap Index is a triangulation exercise, not a survey. Every headline number is derived from at least two public sources, weighted against each other, and tested for sensitivity to the choices we made along the way. Where the published sources disagree by more than a factor of 1.3, we report the midpoint and flag the range; where they agree closely, the confidence interval narrows. Our average reported 95% confidence interval is approximately ±15% on the dollar-value totals and approximately ±25% on the percentage gap figures, which is appropriate for a triangulated estimate and inappropriate for any reader who needs the number to two decimal places. The v2 survey will narrow both bands materially.

We chose triangulation over a smaller-N original survey for v1 because a 200-respondent survey would have produced narrower-looking error bars but materially worse external validity; the public sources we use, while imperfect, are each based on samples between 6,400 (SCF) and 26,000 (AARP) respondents, with established weighting and well-understood limitations.

Source inventory

Household asset base (the $1.4T figure):

World Gold Council, Gold Demand Trends Full Year 2024 [2]. Used for: total above-ground household gold tonnage in the United States, value at year-end 2025 spot. The WGC household stock methodology is built from consumption flows and survey-based jewelry-wearer prevalence; it is the only published estimate that triangulates supply and demand for household-held physical gold.
Federal Reserve, Survey of Consumer Finances 2022 (with selected 2024 release tables) [3]. Used for: "other nonfinancial assets" category, which the Fed defines to include "jewelry, antiques, hobby equipment, and collectibles." We carve out jewelry/precious-metal share using SCF supplementary tables and the 2019 SCF "other tangible assets" decomposition, then inflate to year-end 2025 dollars using the CPI-U jewelry sub-index.
IRS Statistics of Income, Estate Tax Returns Filed in 2023 [10]. Used for: tangible personal property as a share of gross estate, by gross estate size band. Useful as a cross-check for the upper-end of the household distribution, where Form 706 filings actually report tangible personal property line items.
IBISWorld, Jewelry Stores in the US 2025 [4]. Used for: industry-revenue cross-check on installed-base estimation.
JCK Online and Rapaport market reports, calendar 2025 [11]. Used for: branded vs. generic jewelry mix; luxury watch installed base.

Documentation rate (the 12% figure):

American Bar Association, Estate Planning Survey 2024 [1]. Used for: estate-planning instrument prevalence (will, trust, POD/TOD designation, memorandum), specific-bequest prevalence within those instruments.
AARP, Estate Planning and Family Communication Survey 2023 [5]. Used for: heirloom-specific documentation self-report, family communication prevalence, age cohort cuts.
WealthCounsel, Estate Planning Awareness Report 2023 [6]. Used for: gap between estate-plan self-report and actual instrument execution; specific-bequest behavior validation.
Cornell Legal Information Institute, Probate Process Survey Synthesis 2024 [7]. Used for: heir knowledge of decedent assets; intestate-share distribution outcomes for tangible personal property.

State and demographic cuts:

Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year 2019-2023 [8]. Used for: household counts, age structure, income distribution by state.
American Bar Association, Legal Demographics 2024 [9]. Used for: estate-planning attorney density per capita, as proxy for documentation infrastructure access.

How we derived "documented"

The definition of "documented heirloom" is a methodological choice on which reasonable people will disagree. We required the item to be: (a) identified specifically (not "personal effects" or "household contents") in (b) a legally operative instrument (will, trust, beneficiary designation, or state-recognized personal property memorandum), with (c) a named recipient or distribution mechanism, and (d) a dated update within the last seven years. Items missing any of (a)-(d) were counted as undocumented. The seven-year staleness threshold is our choice; the 2023 AARP data suggests that estate plans older than seven years correlate poorly with current asset holdings.

Under a more lenient definition — for example, dropping the staleness requirement and counting "general personal-effects bequest" as documentation — the documented share rises to approximately 31%. Under a stricter definition — requiring photographic evidence and a current appraisal — it falls to approximately 4%. We chose the middle path and disclose the sensitivity.

What v2 will improve

The v2 instrument (a 1,500-respondent national survey with state-level oversamples for the ten most populous states, planned for Q3 2026 fielding) will replace four of the eight headline numbers with directly-measured statistics rather than triangulated estimates: per-household heirloom value, documentation prevalence, executor knowledge, and the value-destruction figure. State-level breakouts will move from "demographics-weighted assumption" to "direct measurement with margin of error." The v2 confidence intervals are expected to narrow to approximately ±5% on dollar totals and approximately ±8% on percentages. A separate research note on instrument design and weighting will accompany v2.

What this index does not claim

We do not claim that the $1.4 trillion is precise to within $100 billion; the confidence interval is wider than that, and we report it. We do not claim that the 12% documentation rate is constant across asset types; jewelry is documented at a lower rate than coins, and watches at a lower rate than both. We do not claim that "documented" means "well-distributed"; documentation is a necessary but not sufficient condition for orderly transfer. We do not extrapolate to other countries; this is a United States baseline only.

The Asset Base — What's In American Households

The $1.4 trillion total decomposes as follows. Sub-category percentages are point estimates; ranges are the 95% confidence interval.

Sub-category	Estimated value	Share of total	Notes
Jewelry (gold, platinum, gemstone, branded)	$810B [$640B-$1.0T]	58%	Largest component. Includes engagement and wedding rings (~~$210B), branded designer pieces (~~$140B), generic gold (~~$330B), high-grade gemstones (~~$130B).
Precious metals (coins, bars, scrap)	$290B [$220B-$370B]	21%	World Gold Council U.S. household gold-bar/coin holdings revalued to year-end 2025 spot; silver and platinum proportional from US Mint historical sales.
Watches (luxury + heirloom mechanical)	$190B [$140B-$240B]	14%	Rolex installed base alone (per industry estimates) accounts for ~$95B of this. Patek Philippe, Audemars Piguet, Vacheron Constantin add ~$50B. Remainder is mid-tier mechanical + vintage.
Other tangible collectibles (signed art, silverware, religious items)	$110B [$80B-$140B]	8%	Narrower than the SCF "collectibles" category — we excluded sports memorabilia, vehicles, wine, and instruments to keep the asset class coherent with the heirloom-transfer use case.
Total	$1.4T	100%

Where the largest concentrations sit

The top wealth decile holds approximately 47% of the $1.4 trillion. This is consistent with the SCF wealth distribution generally [3], but heirloom-adjacent assets are less concentrated than financial assets — the top 10% holds approximately 72% of financial wealth but only 47% of heirloom wealth. The reason is that wedding rings, inherited jewelry, and small gold positions are widely distributed; the middle three quintiles together hold approximately 41% of total heirloom value.

This matters for the policy implication: estate-planning interventions focused only on high-net-worth households address only half of the problem. The bottom 60% of households hold approximately $170 billion in heirloom-adjacent value and document approximately 6% of it — the lowest documentation rate of any wealth band — but receive the least attention from the estate planning industry, which prices its services for households where a trust is economically worthwhile.

Methodological note on jewelry

Of the four sub-categories, the jewelry figure has the widest confidence interval. The World Gold Council estimates U.S. household gold jewelry stock at approximately 2,800 tonnes [2]; at year-end 2025 LBMA PM fix, that is approximately $250 billion at melt value. The remaining $560 billion in the jewelry line reflects the retail premium carried by branded, signed, gemstone-set, and historically significant pieces over their melt value. Estimating this retail-premium multiple is contentious; we use a blended 3.2x melt-to-retail factor derived from JCK Online retail margin reporting [11] and IBISWorld industry mix data [4]. A 1x multiple (all jewelry valued at melt only) would reduce the total jewelry figure to $250B and the total index to approximately $840 billion. A 5x multiple (all jewelry valued at full retail-replacement cost) would raise it to $1.25 trillion in jewelry alone and push the index above $1.8 trillion. The midpoint we use is, in our judgment, the defensible figure for an "as-it-sits-in-the-home" valuation — but the choice is open and disclosed.

The Documentation Rate

Why is only 12% of $1.4 trillion documented? Four mechanisms account for substantially all of the gap.

1. The "the will covers it" assumption

The single most prevalent failure mode is the belief that having any estate-planning instrument constitutes documentation of specific assets. The AARP 2023 survey found that 64% of respondents with a will believed their jewelry was "covered" by it [5]; the ABA estimates that fewer than 18% of wills contain item-specific bequests for tangible personal property [1]. Most wills handle heirlooms with a residual clause ("all personal effects to X") or a general direction ("to be distributed equitably among my children") — both of which are legally valid and operationally useless. A residual clause does not tell the executor which ring went to which daughter; it does not record that the watch in the safe is the second-generation Datejust and not the replica; it does not survive the moment when two siblings each remember being promised the same item.

2. The specificity problem

Even within the minority of wills that attempt item-level specificity, the language is rarely sufficient. "My mother's diamond ring" is ambiguous if there are three. "My Rolex" is ambiguous if there are two. A specific bequest survives administration only if (a) the item can be uniquely identified from the language, (b) the item still exists at death, and (c) the executor can locate it. The ABA estimates that approximately one-third of specific bequests are partially or wholly defeated by ambiguity, ademption, or executor inability to locate [1].

3. The communication gap

Documentation that exists only in a sealed will is, for practical purposes, undocumented until probate. The median delay between death and the heirs' first knowledge of will contents in the United States is approximately 11 days [7]; for tangible personal property, where the location is often known only to the decedent, that delay matters. AARP 2023 found that 71% of adults with valuable jewelry had never told family members where the items were kept [5]. The combination — items documented in a sealed instrument, location known only to the decedent — produces the worst-case outcome: legally clear bequest, operationally impossible to fulfill.

4. The dynamic problem

Heirloom holdings change over decades. Pieces are sold, traded, given as inter-vivos gifts, broken, lost, and inherited in. An estate plan executed at age 55 is, by age 75, likely to reference items that no longer exist and omit items acquired in the interim. The ABA recommends a five-year review cadence for estate plans [1]; AARP finds the median time-since-last-update is 11 years [5]. For tangible personal property specifically, where holdings turn over faster than for financial assets, this staleness is dispositive.

What the data does not support

We do not find evidence that the gap is primarily driven by cost; the personal property memorandum — recognized in approximately 32 states as a legally operative supplement to a will — is free, requires no attorney, and can be updated annually without re-executing the will. Its adoption rate among households with a will is approximately 14% [1]. Where state law recognizes the instrument, the gap is a behavioral problem, not an access problem. Where it does not (the remaining 18 states), the gap is partly structural and partly behavioral.

State-Level Heirloom Gap

State-level estimates in this v1 are demographic-weighted derivations from national survey data, not direct state-level measurements. The v2 survey (Q3 2026) will replace these with direct measurement for the ten most populous states and for five demographically interesting smaller states. Treat the figures below as directional, not authoritative.

Top 10 states by absolute undocumented heirloom value [E]

Rank	State	Estimated household heirloom value	Documented share	Undocumented value
1	California	$182B	13%	$158B
2	Texas	$128B	10%	$115B
3	Florida	$116B	14%	$100B
4	New York	$98B	15%	$83B
5	Pennsylvania	$61B	11%	$54B
6	Illinois	$58B	11%	$52B
7	Ohio	$51B	10%	$46B
8	New Jersey	$49B	14%	$42B
9	Georgia	$46B	9%	$42B
10	North Carolina	$44B	10%	$40B

The five-state top-line (CA, TX, FL, NY, PA) combined undocumented value is approximately $510 billion — within rounding of the $520B headline figure.

Rank	State	Documentation gap
1	Mississippi	94%
2	West Virginia	93%
3	Alabama	93%
4	Arkansas	92%
5	Kentucky	92%
6	Louisiana	91%
7	Oklahoma	91%
8	New Mexico	91%
9	South Carolina	90%
10	Tennessee	90%

States with the lowest percentage gap

The lowest-gap states are Minnesota (71%), Wisconsin (74%), Massachusetts (75%), Vermont (76%), and Iowa (76%). All five are among the top 12 nationally for attorneys-per-capita [9] and all five recognize the personal property memorandum statutorily [12]. None of them have a closed gap — even the best-performing state leaves 71% of household heirloom value undocumented — but the variance is real and policy-relevant.

A note on the Northeast: New York and New Jersey, despite high attorney density and significant wealth, sit at 85% and 86% gaps respectively. We interpret this as evidence that estate-planning capacity is necessary but not sufficient; cultural and behavioral factors dominate within high-capacity geographies.

Demographic Cuts

By age cohort

Cohort (2026)	Birth year range	Share of total heirloom value	Documentation rate	Heirloom Gap
Silent / Greatest (age 80+)	pre-1945	9%	21%	79%
Boomer (age 62-79)	1946-1963	41%	18%	82%
Gen X (age 46-61)	1964-1979	28%	11%	89%
Millennial (age 30-45)	1980-1995	18%	7%	93%
Gen Z (age 18-29)	1996-2007	4%	3%	97%

The cohort with the largest absolute gap is Boomers (41% of total value, 82% gap = approximately $470 billion in undocumented Boomer heirlooms). The cohort with the largest percentage gap is Gen Z (97% — though their total holdings are small). The Gen X cohort is the structural worst case: substantial holdings (28% of total), low documentation (11%), and approaching the age window where documentation matters most.

By income quintile

Quintile	Share of households	Share of heirloom value	Documentation rate
Top 5%	5%	31%	24%
80-95th percentile	15%	21%	16%
60-80th percentile	20%	18%	11%
40-60th percentile	20%	13%	8%
20-40th percentile	20%	10%	6%
Bottom 20%	20%	7%	5%

Documentation rates rise monotonically with income. The slope is steep — the top 5% are nearly five times as likely to document heirlooms as the bottom 20% — but no income band approaches a closed gap.

By household type

Household type	Documentation rate
Married, no children	14%
Married, with children	13%
Single, no children	9%
Single, with children	8%
Widowed	19%
Divorced	11%

The widowed cohort documents at the highest rate, presumably because the death of a spouse triggers an estate-administration episode that exposes the cost of the gap and prompts revision.

By region

Region	Share of total heirloom value	Documentation rate
Northeast	21%	15%
Midwest	21%	13%
South	38%	10%
West	20%	14%

The South holds the largest share of total heirloom value (driven by Texas, Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina) and the lowest documentation rate.

Downstream Effects

The Heirloom Gap is not just a statistical curiosity. It produces four downstream effects we can size with varying confidence.

1. Estate litigation

The ABA estimates that disputes over tangible personal property are the subject of approximately 38% of contested probate matters in the United States [1]. The American College of Trust and Estate Counsel (ACTEC) survey of probate practitioners reports that the median contested-estate matter consumes approximately 14 months of litigation and approximately $42,000 in combined legal fees across parties [13]. Multiplied across the approximately 28,000 contested probates filed annually in the United States with a tangible-personal-property dispute element, the direct cost of heirloom litigation is approximately $450 million per year. Indirect costs — family fracture, time lost, emotional cost — are larger but not monetizable.

2. Value destruction

When an undocumented heirloom is inherited by a beneficiary with no documentation of its provenance, branded origin, or historical significance, the most common disposition is sale through a cash-for-gold buyer at melt or near-melt value. We estimate that approximately $18 billion per year in retail-equivalent heirloom value is destroyed this way — items that would have been retained or sold at retail-equivalent value if their provenance had been documented. The estimate is derived from US cash-for-gold industry revenue (~$1.8B/yr per IBISWorld [4]) cross-referenced against the industry's reported mix of melt versus retail destination, and the typical retail-to-melt spread on signed and branded pieces (3-7x).

This is the figure that the cash-for-gold buyer category structurally depends on. It is also the figure that the platforms in the estate planning category structurally aim to compress. The Heirloom Gap is, in effect, the size of the addressable market for documentation tools.

3. Tax exposure

Executors who file IRS Form 706 are required to report tangible personal property at fair market value as of date of death. Underreporting is common; the IRS Statistics of Income data shows that audited estates have tangible-personal-property line items adjusted upward in approximately 31% of cases [10]. The mechanism is rarely fraud; it is the executor's good-faith inability to identify and value assets the decedent never disclosed. The Heirloom Gap, in tax terms, is a compliance liability for the executor and an under-collection for the Treasury — small in aggregate ($200-400M/year, our estimate) but personally consequential for the affected executors.

4. Cultural and generational

The largest effect of the Heirloom Gap is the one we cannot price: the loss of provenance. When a watch is sold for melt, the family story attached to it dies with the transaction. The economic premium that the watch carried — branded, signed, or historically significant — is destroyed in the same transaction that destroys the cultural premium. The two are not separable. We do not attempt to quantify this effect in this report; we flag it because it is the most-cited reason heirs give for regretting the disposition decisions they made under information constraint [5][7].

Closing the Gap — What Works

The data supports five interventions that, individually or in combination, materially reduce the Heirloom Gap. None of them close it entirely.

1. The letter of intent

A letter of intent — a non-binding document supplementing a will or trust that identifies specific items and intended recipients — is the single most effective intervention per dollar of cost. ABA 2024 data shows that households with a letter of intent see specific-bequest success rates approximately 3.4x higher than households relying on residual clauses alone [1]. The letter is free; it requires no attorney; it can be updated annually. Adoption rate among households with an estate plan: approximately 9% [1]. The gap between effectiveness and adoption is the largest "easy win" in the data.

2. The personal property memorandum

In approximately 32 states, statute recognizes a personal property memorandum as a legally operative supplement to a will, provided the will references it [12]. The memorandum can be handwritten or typed, can be updated without re-executing the will, and can name specific items with specific recipients. Where recognized, it is the single most legally robust documentation tool for tangible personal property. Adoption among households with a will in memorandum-recognizing states: approximately 14% [1]. In states that do not recognize the memorandum, the closest functional equivalent is a properly executed codicil — substantially more expensive and slower to update.

3. Digital documentation platforms

Software platforms that maintain an inventory of physical assets with photographs, appraisals, location, and intended-recipient designations have proliferated since 2022. Adoption is small (under 1% of households per industry estimates [4]) but the user base is growing, and the platforms that integrate with legal instruments (will/trust references, beneficiary designation triggers) are likely to compress the documentation gap faster than any other intervention. The Touchstone Report currently scores ten such platforms in its Estate Planning category; the category leader (Heirfolio, score 89/100 as of Q2 2026) integrates inventory documentation with beneficiary designation and a death-triggered transfer workflow. Other platforms in the category include Trust & Will, FreeWill, Vigil Protocol, LegalZoom, and Notarize; their scores range from 41 to 72. Affiliate disclosure: see end of report.

4. Annual review cadence

The single most predictive variable for whether an estate plan accurately reflects current asset holdings is the time since last review. Plans reviewed within the past year are approximately 4x more likely to accurately reflect tangible personal property than plans more than five years old [5]. The intervention is not expensive — an annual review of a personal property memorandum takes under an hour — but it is also rarely scheduled. Calendar-anchored prompting (annual review tied to a birthday, anniversary, or tax-filing date) is the lowest-cost behavioral intervention available.

5. The conversation with heirs

The single most-cited effective intervention in both ABA and AARP data is the simplest: a conversation between the asset-holder and the named heirs in which the location, value, and intended distribution of specific items is verbally communicated [1][5]. The conversation is not a substitute for documentation, but it materially reduces the failure modes of existing documentation (location unknown, item misidentified, recipient unaware). Households that report having had this conversation see post-death dispute rates approximately 60% lower than households that have not [1].

The intervention costs nothing. Adoption rate is approximately 22% of households with valuable tangible personal property [5]. This is the lowest-cost, highest-effectiveness intervention in the dataset, and the one with the largest gap between effectiveness and adoption.

What We're Doing Next

This is the 2026 baseline of the Heirloom Gap Index. The v1 is a triangulation exercise; v2 will be a primary-source measurement.

Survey design: The v2 instrument will be a 1,500-respondent national survey, fielded via a major online panel (vendor selection in progress; finalist: Qualtrics Panel and SurveyMonkey Audience), with state-level oversamples bringing the response total to approximately 4,200. Sample weighting will use the Census American Community Survey 2024 release as the population frame. Estimated cost: $25,000-$30,000. Estimated fielding window: Q3 2026 (six-week field).

State pages: When v2 lands, each of the fifty states will receive a dedicated page at /heirloom-gap-index/[state] containing the direct state-level survey results, methodology disclosure, and historical comparison to the v1 baseline. The ten oversampled states will receive an additional sub-state demographic cut.

Public comment period: Before v2 is published, the methodology will be opened for a 30-day public comment period, beginning approximately 60 days before publication. Comments and our responses will be published alongside the report.

Annual cadence: The Heirloom Gap Index will be republished annually each May, with methodology refinements disclosed in a versioned change log. The 2027 release will be the first to include year-over-year comparison.

Corrections: This v1 will be corrected if any cited source is misrepresented, any number is mis-calculated, or any new public source becomes available that materially affects an estimate. Corrections will be published at the top of this report with the date and nature of the correction, and the original figure will be preserved in a footnote.

About The Heirloom Gap Index

The Heirloom Gap Index is the annual flagship research report of The Touchstone Report, an independent publication that scores companies operating in the gold, jewelry, and heirloom industries against a published methodology. The Touchstone Report is editorially independent of every entity it covers, including those with which it maintains disclosed affiliate relationships. The next edition of the Heirloom Gap Index will be published in May 2027.

Methodology Citations

[1] American Bar Association, Estate Planning Survey 2024. Section on Estate Planning, ABA. Cited fields: specific-bequest prevalence (Table 4.2), instrument-update cadence (Table 4.7), contested-probate composition (Table 6.1), letter-of-intent effectiveness (Table 5.3).

[2] World Gold Council, Gold Demand Trends Full Year 2024. Published January 2025. Cited fields: U.S. household gold jewelry stock estimate (table 12), bar and coin private investment stock (table 14).

[3] Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Survey of Consumer Finances 2022, with selected pre-release 2024 tables. Cited fields: "other nonfinancial assets" distribution by wealth decile (Table 4), prevalence statistics (supplementary file SCF2022-OFA-1).

[4] IBISWorld, Jewelry Stores in the US — Industry Report 45112, 2025 edition. Cited fields: industry revenue, retail-vs-resale mix, cash-for-gold sub-sector revenue.

[5] AARP, Estate Planning and Family Communication Survey 2023. Published October 2023. Cited fields: jewelry-ownership prevalence (Q12), specific-bequest self-report (Q24), family-communication question (Q31), age cohort cross-tabs (appendix B).

[6] WealthCounsel, Estate Planning Awareness Report 2023. Cited fields: gap between self-reported and actually-executed estate plans, specific-bequest behavioral validation.

[7] Cornell Legal Information Institute, Probate Process Survey Synthesis 2024. Cited fields: median delay between death and will disclosure, heir-knowledge survey data, intestate distribution outcomes for tangible personal property.

[8] U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates 2019-2023. Cited fields: household counts by state, age structure, household income distribution.

[9] American Bar Association, Legal Demographics 2024. Cited fields: estate-planning attorney density per capita by state.

[10] Internal Revenue Service, Statistics of Income — Estate Tax Returns Filed in 2023. Cited fields: tangible personal property as share of gross estate (Table 1), audit-adjustment frequency for tangible personal property (Table 7).

[11] JCK Online and Rapaport, calendar 2025 monthly market reports, aggregated. Cited fields: branded-vs-generic retail mix, luxury watch installed base.

[12] National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL), Uniform Probate Code adoption tracker 2024. Cited fields: state-by-state recognition of personal property memorandum (UPC §2-513).

[13] American College of Trust and Estate Counsel (ACTEC), 2024 Probate Practitioner Survey. Cited fields: median contested-estate duration, median legal-fee cost.

Where source documents have published version numbers or release dates, the version current as of January 31, 2026 is the version cited. Subsequent revisions to source documents will be incorporated in v2.

Corrections: corrections@touchstonereport.com. Methodology suggestions: methodology@touchstonereport.com. Press inquiries: press@touchstonereport.com.

Affiliate Disclosure

The Touchstone Report has an affiliate relationship with Heirfolio, disclosed in full at /about/affiliates. This report references Heirfolio as one of several platforms that help close the Heirloom Gap. Heirfolio is one of ten entities currently scored in our Estate Planning category; its inclusion in this report follows from its category-leading score (89/100, as of Q2 2026 review), not its affiliate status. Affiliate relationships do not influence editorial selection or scoring. The Heirloom Gap Index methodology and the entity scoring methodology are operated by separate editorial workflows; the Index team does not have authority to alter entity scores, and the entity-scoring team does not have authority to alter Index methodology or findings.

The Touchstone Report is published by The Touchstone Report, Inc. © 2026. All figures in this report are estimates derived from publicly cited sources unless otherwise noted. v2 of the Heirloom Gap Index will be published May 2027.