Private Client

  • Protecting Property with Lasting Powers of Attorney

    When it comes to ascertaining your current wealth, it is often the case that a person’s main asset is their property.  It is common, therefore, for people to protect their property from unforeseen circumstances such as flooding, fire and...

  • Funding Long Term Care Fees

    A hot topic at present, particularly in the light of the Dillnot Report earlier this year, is the funding of long term care fees.  Despite media reports suggesting otherwise, statistically few people will need care but the prospect, and the potential...

  • Why use a Spousal By-Pass Trust?

    Many people have death-in-service benefits through their employment or death benefits via their pension scheme. Most people nominate their death benefit to be paid to their spouse or partner but these benefits are generally not considered an asset of the...

  • MISSING A TRICK? - Gifts out of Income to avoid Inheritance Tax

    Introduction Over the years, there have been many complex and contrived schemes put in place to avoid inheritance tax (IHT). However, in many cases, significant savings can be made by simply taking advantage of one of the statutory exemptions from IHT -...

  • IHT Guidance From the Tax Man

    HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) offer useful guidance on the mechanics of the transfer of the unused IHT ‘nil rate band’ between spouses or civil partners and gives several examples of this complex relief. One important point for executors is...

  • Paying For a Permanent Home Care Place

    Many people, as they grow older, worry about where they will live if they are no longer able to manage in their own home. For some, the need will arise for nursing home or residential care. The cost of care varies greatly, depending on the kind of care...

  • Who is Under the Influence?

    The law recognises that some people (such as solicitors or accountants) have a high degree of influence over other people (their clients), since clients hire their professional advisers for the specific purpose of giving advice. However, it is not normally...

  • Making Your Will - Guidance

    It is easy to keep putting off making a will. However, having a valid will is the only way to guarantee that your estate goes to who you want it to when you die. If a person dies having made a will, the distribution of their estate is normally...

  • Divorce and the Company Director

    Divorce is almost never easy and the financial negotiations can be protracted and difficult, particularly when there are business interests involved. In this article we consider some of the issues surrounding divorce for company directors. In the first...

  • Unfair Contract Terms - Your Rights as a Consumer

    UK consumer protection legislation is robust, giving them substantial rights and imposing significant obligations on traders. Indeed, in some cases the actions of a vendor may be sufficient to constitute an ‘unfair commercial practice’ (UCP). UK...

  • Assessing Mental Capacity - Guidance

    One of the conditions which must be satisfied for a will to be valid is that the person making it must be of sound mind. With an ageing population, cases involving disputes over a testator’s mental capacity are becoming more common – it is...

  • HMRC Guidance on Tax Residence

    Following changes in the tax legislation governing the income tax payable by non-domiciliaries, and some relevant tax cases, HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) have issued a guidance booklet (HMRC 6) . This replaces the old guidance, which was contained in...

  • Divorce and the Family Home

    Family break-up is always complicated and when there is a property involved, things can get very complex indeed. In principle, when a couple are cohabiting (not married or in a civil partnership) the property belongs as of right to whoever is shown on the...

  • Start of Year Tax Planning

    The early months of the tax year are a good time for savers to think about tax planning for the current year. In particular, now is a good time to think about investments that produce regular income – if you can find them. If you expect to have a...

  • Estates - What Happens if Values Fall?

    One of the biggest problems now facing executors is that as the recession progresses, most assets, other than cash, are falling in value, which can mean that the value of an estate for Inheritance Tax (IHT) purposes is greater than the market value later on....

  • Child Maintenance Explained

    The Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission (CMEC) – a statutory non-departmental public body – was established in 2008 to take on the work of the Child Support Agency. At the same time, the Child Maintenance and Other Payments Act 2008 ...

  • Heir Hunters - Take Advice!

    Until the recent publicity afforded by television shows on the subject, many people might not have realised that ‘heir tracing’ companies exist, let alone that they research ‘promising’ estates by looking at public records and then...

  • Buying Abroad - Considerations

    After another cold, wet summer and with dull economic prospects at home, you might be thinking of buying a property abroad or even making a permanent move to foreign climes. If so, as well as it being essential to take independent and high quality legal...

  • Buying a House and Consumer Protection

    With the appointment of an Ombudsman for Estate Agents (OEA), the laying down in statute of the duties of estate agents and the passing of the Consumers, Estate Agents and Redress Act 2007 (CEARA), a property purchaser might reasonably conclude that...

  • Planning Law Basics - New Developments

    Whether you are planning to refurbish and sell a house or to construct a whole new apartment block, almost all your plans will be governed by planning laws and any local restrictions. Planning restrictions are more stringent in conservation areas, for...

  • Stamp Duty Land Tax: Beginner's Guide

    Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) is a self-assessed tax. The onus is on the taxpayer to make the necessary land transaction return, calculate the tax and pay it across. This is a fundamental change from the old Stamp Duty regime which taxed documents of...

  • What Happens on Intestacy?

    The levels of statutory legacy (the amount that surviving spouses or civil partners are allowed to inherit if their spouse/civil partner dies without leaving a will)  were increased from 1 February 2009 to the following: • £250,000 (from...

  • Fact Sheet - Disclosure to Mortgage Lenders of Incentives for Buyers

    This fact sheet provides guidance for those involved in the development of residential properties whether new builds or conversions of existing properties . On 1 September 2008, the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML)  introduced new procedures in...

  • Selling Your Property at Auction

    In recent years, increased mobility and growing rates of home ownership have meant that ever-larger numbers of people nowadays inherit properties from relatives who lived many miles away. Similarly, many buy-to-let properties have been purchased in areas...

  • Mortgage Exit Administration Charges - Consumer Redress

    When you ask for a redemption statement from your mortgage lender, it can come as an unpleasant surprise to see an additional charge termed ‘mortgage exit administration fee’ (MEAF), which, while it will be shown in the mortgage offer letter, is...

  • Cohabitees and Death - Who Can Claim?

    When one member of a cohabiting couple dies, it can come as an unpleasant surprise to the bereaved partner to discover that not all of their late partner’s estate will pass to them in the absence of a will. It is only when this happens that many people...

  • Taking Children into Care - The Legal Process

    We often hear of children being taken into care, but the process by which this occurs is not well known. The Children Act 1989 lays down the circumstances under which it is appropriate for a child to be taken into care or a supervision order made. The...

  • Unlocking Your Equity - the Choices

    There is a bewildering variety of equity release schemes on the market and, judging by the letters pages of the financial press, they are not well understood. Releasing equity in a house can be an effective way of supplementing your income or releasing spare...

  • The Duties of Mortgage Lenders

    The instability in the financial markets recently means lenders are taking a tougher stance on lending and repossessions are rising. When mortgage arrears are serious and/or there is a breach of the mortgage covenants, the lender will usually seek an order...

  • What is Phased Retirement?

    Phased retirement is the term given to the process by which retirement pensions are split into segments, which are then treated separately. It makes use of the rule in the UK that allows a retirement policyholder to take each pension policy at a time of...

  • Putting Cash into a Family Business

    When younger members of a family start a business, they often ask other family members to provide part of the necessary capital. If you are approached to do this and are willing to provide funding, it is often difficult to know how best to provide the cash....

  • How Drawdown Lifetime Mortgages Work

    For people who have money tied up in their homes who wish to release capital for expenditure, or possibly to give to family members, the drawdown lifetime mortgage (DLM) is a possible vehicle. A DLM is simply a mortgage, but one which is drawn down over...

  • The Enterprise Investment Scheme

    Successive governments have recognised that the spirit of entrepreneurialism, though deeply ingrained in the UK’s culture, is not really very well supported by the financial institutions. In an attempt to provide more ready access to investment capital...

  • Charity Trustees - Guidance

    The regime governing charities has been progressively tightened up over the years, making the sort of scandals that were once not uncommon much more of a rarity. This means that trustees now have to adopt a more professional attitude to the management of a...

  • Treasure Trove - The Law

    There are countless stories of buried treasure, for example, the recent a huge find of Roman artefacts  unearthed in London, but the public at large know little of the law relating to treasure trove and especially the law relating to items...

  • How Inheritance Tax Works

    Inheritance Tax (IHT) is paid on your estate when you die and also when money is transferred into some trust funds. Some other transfers during one’s lifetime may also be subject to IHT. The first £325,000 (at 2013/14 rates) of the estate is...

  • Post-Nuptial Agreements - the Basics

    More than 40 per cent of marriages end in divorce (in England and Wales more than 110,000 couples divorce annually) and when one in five of all men and women seeking to end their marriage have already been through one divorce, it is perhaps not surprising...

  • Cohabitation Agreements - Protection for Unmarried Couples

    One of the most common myths in English law is that there is such a thing as a ‘common law marriage’. It simply doesn’t exist and this misapprehension has led the Law Commission to suggest proposals giving additional rights to cohabiting...

  • Asset Valuation Problems - Chattels

    When dealing with an estate, an increasing problem for executors is the valuation of assets in the form of the chattels of the deceased. In probate terminology, chattels are the ‘everyday’ assets such as furniture and ordinary possessions, as...

  • IHT Planning and the AIM

    In recent years, Inheritance Tax (IHT) has affected more and more families, largely due to rising house prices. IHT is payable at 40 per cent on the net assets of an estate where these exceed £325,000 – the current (2013/14) nil-rate band....

  • Equity Release

    Managing an active retirement can present significant problems for the many people who are blessed with good health but cursed by the effects of the poor performance of pension funds and low annuity rates over the last two decades. This combination of...

  • Avoiding Inheritance Tax with Discounted Gift Schemes

    Inheritance tax (IHT) is payable at 40 per cent on the net value of a person’s estate above (2010/11 rates) £325,000 (the current nil rate band). It affects an increasing number of people due to the rise in house prices in recent years. One...

  • Duty of Care Surprisingly Limited

    An interesting attempt at a defence came to nothing in a recent traffic accident case.   It involved a driver who, having missed his turning, decided to do a U-turn in the road. The visibility where he chose to carry out the manoeuvre was poor for...

  • Tenants' Right to Buy

    The right of secure tenants to buy their homes was established under the Housing Act 1980 . The original rules have subsequently been amended, however, mainly owing to a growing number of abuses of the system. These mainly involved property speculators who...

  • Divorce and Foreign Nationality

    Approximately one in six marriages in the European Union is between persons of different nationalities. Not surprisingly, approximately one in six divorces also involves spouses of different nationalities. This can make for some complexity on divorce as to...

  • CGT and Shares in Estates Valuation Trap

    In the UK, there are quite generous exemptions from Inheritance Tax (IHT) which apply to business assets. One problem with making use of such exemptions is the effect this may have on the subsequent value of the relevant assets for Capital Gains Tax (CGT)...

  • Should I Buy To Let?

    With property values recovering and market returns for many investments quite modest, the buy to let market may seem an attractive proposition. In this article we look at some of the more practical, but less often mentioned, aspects of buy to let which...

  • Child Custody Explained

    Arrangements over the custody of children (called residence arrangements by lawyers) after the breakdown of a relationship are usually best decided without the intervention of the court. Unfortunately, it is not always possible for the two parties to...

  • Lasting Powers of Attorney

    In October 2007 there was a fundamental change on the way in the way powers of attorney are created and the powers that they can give attorneys, when the Enduring Power of Attorney (EPA) was replaced by the Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA). EPAs are no...

  • Lasting Powers of Attorney

    In October 2007 there was a fundamental change on the way in the way powers of attorney are created and the powers that they can give attorneys, when the Enduring Power of Attorney (EPA) was replaced by the Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA). EPAs are no longer...
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