Wealth Management & Tax Planning

This sub-division of the Wills, Trust and Probate team was set up to provide advice to our clients on more specialist areas, such as:-

• Residential / nursing care issues
• Planning for pensions
• Planning for death in service benefits
• Life assurance trusts
• Asset preservation

Residential / nursing care issues

Many people do not seek professional advice on what is probably one of the largest financial commitments they make - paying for long term care. We are able to provide advice on the various methods of funding available, act in relation to appeals where funding is denied, review and provide advice post-death where funding should have been available and recover sums due to the estate, provide advice on planning for care home fee funding and preserving assets for future generations. For more information refer to the Guide to Care Home Fees and the Guide to Care Home Contracts.

Planning for pensions and planning for death in service benefits

Many people have death in service benefits and pension lump sum benefits payable as a result of their death. It is often forgotten that the sums may have a detrimental effect on the estate of the surviving spouse/civil partner upon their death, as opposed to the beneficial one that was intended.

It is common place for people to nominate these lump sums to a spouse or civil partner and a result of the nomination is that the lump sum payment does not normally form part of the estate of the first to die. If the nomination is successful, the downside will be that the amount recovered will increase the survivor's estate by, quite often, a considerable sum which, on their death, may possibly lead to an unnecessary charge to Inheritance Tax and possibly other (non-tax) implications.

We quite often suggest to our clients that they may wish to use a Pilot Trust in these circumstances in order to prevent an unnecessary charge to Inheritance Tax and to protect the funds. Please refer to the Guide to Pilot Trusts which provides more information.

Life assurance trusts

It is quite often the case that people have life assurance trusts to benefit certain members of the family, such as children from a first marriage which, instead of the policy proceeds being paid directly to a beneficiary upon death, the policy benefits are written under trust which could benefit children and other family members. This is often a useful way of preventing such sums of money being attached by divorce or bankruptcy proceedings and can also assist in preserving assets for future grandchildren.

Asset preservation

We undertake complex planning for our clients who wish to pass shares of properties or assets onto their children as opposed to the surviving spouse. This can assist for many reasons such as care home fee planning and also to protect assets for future generations and from any second marriage situations. Asset preservation can take many forms and can involve planning during lifetime together with planning undertaken through wills. This may involve gifting assets to a trust during lifetime or underneath wills or making gifts to third parties. Our advice includes utilising the gifting allowances for inheritance tax and successful planning for the future. The Guide to Making Gifts provides more detail on this subject.

Contact us

For more information about any of these areas please contact Greg Baker or Joanna Scales.