Estate planning

For many clients, estate planning is the process for passing wealth down through the generations. Our role is to help clients to develop a coherent long-term strategy and to implement tactical solutions that underpin this strategy. We work with our clients’ existing professional advisers, typically financial advisers and accountants, to ensure a seamless and coordinated approach to producing a comprehensive and efficient estate plan.

In a nutshell, estate planning is about taking the time today to plan what happens to your estate in the future, making sure you have all the right legal documents in place to carry out your wishes and manage your estate through your lifetime and in the event of ill health or death. A will and power of attorney are the foundations of estate planning. Trusts can be helpful to protect family assets or to pass assets through multiple generations. You may also wish to reduce any potential inheritance tax liability and there are numerous exemptions and reliefs providing individuals with a range of options to reduce the potential liability on their estate. Philanthropy is also a consideration for some clients and we can advise on charitable donations.

We offer a full estate planning exercise to enable clients to plan effectively for now and for the future, using legitimate strategies to protect and pass on wealth as tax efficiently as possible.

We also help business owners to structure their affairs to provide for family succession if relevant, to ensure that steps are taken to maximise tax reliefs and to extract the value of business interests from an estate for the benefit of family and relatives. We can also provide assistance in the suitable structuring of life insurance policies, death in service benefits and pension death benefits.

We work with a broad variety of clients in different personal and financial circumstances to produce bespoke, holistic plans relating to estates ranging from simple and straightforward to the most complex and high-value.