Form 4.0 is Ohio's probate inventory form. Once a fiduciary (executor or administrator) is appointed to manage an estate, the court requires them to file an inventory and appraisal of the decedent's assets. In most Ohio counties this filing is called Form 4.0, "Inventory and Appraisal of Decedent's Assets," and it is due within three months of appointment.
Form 4.0 is the single most useful document an investor can read on a probate case. Earlier filings (the application, the bond, the Letters of Authority) confirm that a case has opened. Form 4.0 is the first official document that tells you what is actually in the estate.
The form has three numerical lines that matter most: the value of personal property, the value of real property, and the total estate value. Each is reported in dollars by the fiduciary, supported by an appraiser's signature when one is required.
The Three Lines That Matter
Form 4.0 reports estate assets in two categories:
1. Personal Property. Bank accounts, vehicles, household contents, tangible items, and intangible assets that are not real estate. The personal property total appears on the form's summary page.
2. Real Property. The decedent's interest in real estate, valued at the date of death. Each parcel is described separately on a schedule attached to the inventory, with a parcel number, address or legal description, and an appraised value.
3. Total Estate Value. The sum of personal and real property values.
For an investor scanning a list of probate cases, the Real Property line is the field that determines whether a case is worth pursuing. A nonzero Real Property value confirms that the estate includes real estate the executor will eventually have to dispose of. A $0.00 Real Property value confirms the opposite: the decedent owned no real property at the time of death.
Reading the Real Property Section
When Form 4.0 reports nonzero real property, an itemized schedule is attached. Each parcel entry typically includes:
•Parcel number. The county auditor's identifier for the property. In Hamilton County these are formatted like "550-0021-0257-00." Other counties use slightly different conventions.
•Property address or legal description. Sometimes the street address; more often a legal description by subdivision, lot, township, and plat reference.
•Appraised value. The fair market value at the date of death, as determined by a licensed appraiser or commissioner.
•Encumbrance status. Whether the property is subject to a mortgage, lien, or other claim. The encumbrance amount may or may not be deducted from the appraised value.
The appraised value is the most useful number for an investor. It is the executor's official position on what the property is worth. If the estate later sells the property privately, the price will usually land within a reasonable range of this appraisal. If the estate uses a court-supervised sale, the appraisal is the floor price.
For a deeper field-by-field map of what each Form 4.0 line produces, see What Data Fields Matter Most in Probate Leads.
Form 4.0 is a paper-era form filled out by a busy attorney's office and stamped by the court. Anomalies happen. Five worth knowing:
1. Total Estate $0 but Real Property $X. Some county courts (Hamilton most notably) frequently file Form 4.0 with the Total field left blank or set to zero, even when the Real Property field reports a nonzero figure. The fiduciary's signature is on the inventory and the schedule of real property is attached, but the auto-fill of the Total field did not run. Trust the Real Property line, not the Total.
2. Personal + Real does not equal Total. Math errors and unsynchronized fields appear in scanned forms. When the three numbers do not reconcile, the line items (Personal and Real, individually) are usually correct; the Total is the most error-prone field.
3. Schedule attached but no real-property summary on the cover sheet. A few counties report the real-property schedule as an attachment without summarizing the value on the inventory cover page. Read both.
4. Inventory marked partial or supplemental. A first inventory may report only what the fiduciary has confirmed within the three-month deadline. Later supplements add additional assets. Always check whether a Supplemental Inventory has been filed before drawing conclusions.
5. No Form 4.0 because the case uses relief from administration. Smaller estates may bypass full administration via the Application to Relieve from Administration process. The inventory is replaced by a different schedule (often labeled "Assets and Liabilities") that serves a similar purpose. Read whatever schedule the case actually filed; the data structure is comparable.
These quirks are why automated extraction needs human review at the margins. The text on the form is not always the truth; the truth lives in the cross-section of the form, the schedule, and the county auditor record.
Form 4.0 reports the fiduciary's position on the estate. The county auditor reports the public record of property ownership and value. They should agree, but they often differ slightly:
•Auditor assessed value vs Form 4.0 appraised value. Assessed value is for tax purposes and is typically 35 percent of market value in Ohio. Form 4.0 appraisals are at full market value. A Form 4.0 figure that is roughly 2.85 times the auditor's assessed value is consistent with that ratio.
•Owner of record. The auditor lists the legal owner. Form 4.0 lists the decedent. When the auditor's owner is the decedent, the parcel is part of the estate. When the auditor's owner is a surviving spouse, a trust, or someone else entirely, the parcel is outside probate even if Form 4.0 reports a value (rare; usually a fiduciary error).
•Last sale date. The auditor records the most recent transfer. If the last sale date is after the decedent's date of death, the property was sold between death and inventory. If it is before the date of death, the parcel was already transferred out and Form 4.0 should not list it.
For more on filtering at intake using these signals, see Why Many Ohio Probate Cases Have No Real Estate.
Form 4.0 reports gross asset values. It does not report:
•Mortgages or liens. These reduce the equity available to the estate. Encumbrance information may be on the inventory schedule or may need to be pulled from the county recorder.
•Outstanding debts of the estate. Funeral expenses, medical bills, credit card debt, and tax liabilities reduce what the estate distributes. These appear in the Account filings later in the case, not on Form 4.0.
•Pending creditor claims. Creditors have a window to file claims against the estate. The inventory does not anticipate these.
•Family allowances and support. Surviving spouses and minor children may receive statutory allowances that take priority over distribution to other heirs.
For an investor, Form 4.0 is the right first read because it answers the question "is there real property?" with high reliability. The follow-up question, "what is the equity?", requires additional research beyond the inventory.
Where Structured Data Helps
Reading Form 4.0 across hundreds of cases per week is mechanical work that benefits from being done once and shared across investors. Ohio Probate Data extracts the Real Property line, parcel description, and appraised value from Form 4.0 filings as they appear in each county's docket, cross-references them against the county auditor, and reports the result in the weekly file. Investors who want to skip the inventory-reading step can use the file as a pre-filtered list. The Free Sample page shows a recent week in the same format.
For the family-side companion to this asset-side guide, see How to Read a Form 1.0, which covers the surviving-spouse and next-of-kin roster and the side-2 vested-beneficiary override. For a broader walkthrough of every filing type that appears in an Ohio probate docket, How to Read an Ohio Probate Docket covers the chronology and signal hierarchy of filings. The glossary defines the specific Ohio probate forms and terms referenced in this article.
Key Takeaways
1. Form 4.0 is the Ohio probate inventory form, due within three months of fiduciary appointment. It is the first official document that tells you what is actually in the estate.
2. The three numerical lines that matter are Personal Property, Real Property, and Total Estate Value. The Real Property line answers the investor's primary question.
3. The real-property schedule attached to Form 4.0 lists each parcel with parcel number, description, and appraised value. The appraisal is the executor's official position on the property's market value.
4. Common anomalies (Total $0 with nonzero Real Property, math mismatches, partial inventories, no Form 4.0 in relief-from-administration cases) require reading the form alongside the schedule and the docket.
5. Cross-reference Form 4.0 with the county auditor to confirm ownership, sale history, and assessed value before committing to outreach.
6. Form 4.0 reports gross asset values. Equity, debts, and creditor claims appear in later filings.
7. Structured weekly data exists to automate the routine inventory-reading work so investors can focus on the cases that have a clear real-property signal.