Sorry to hear of the circumstances Steve, but at least I can help you with identifying the watch. We get probably more requests to identify these than about any other watch, the lack of a line name on the dial makes it unusually difficult to identify for a 60s/70s Heuer. Plus as it stands there are no model tables or picture galleries for these on OTD; the place to look is in the "Catalogs" (sic) section but I wouldn't expect someone coming to the site to ID a watch to try there!

The watch belongs to what I call the second economy series, perhaps doing it something of an injustice but not to denigrate it, rather just to show that it was Heuer's cheapest offering at the time. All things are relative and the price differential to its sister Carrera, with which it shares many parts, was small.

Specifically, the watch looks like a 7721 S, as shown in this catalogue from 1970:

As far as value, I see a UK on the paper there, so I'll give it in GBP - if you need it in anything else, just convert it. I see purchase prices on these between maybe £750 to £1500 for a very good or better example. Insurance generally needs to take into account possible difficulties in acquiring another example of something vintage and uses a loaded value as a result (and premiums to match...) so you'd want to go with at least the higher end of that range.

A couple of posts where I have IDed similar watches that contain information that may be of interest:

http://www.chronocentric.com/forums/heuer/index.cgi?page=1;md=read;id=41766
http://www.chronocentric.com/forums/heuer/index.cgi?page=1;md=read;id=31585