Private Client Services
The Legal 500 2011 recognises that the team, "Listens carefully, is very professional and makes clients feel comfortable."
“Hazel Gill and William Riley at Leathes Prior compete with the best. Clients appreciate their efficient and pragmatic approach.”
[Legal 500 2009]
Our Private Client team advises on those areas which will affect us all in some way at some time during our lives. Hazel Gill, the Partner in charge of this team, is an experienced senior practitioner in the field of trusts and estates and a fully qualified member of both the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners (STEP) and Solicitors for the Elderly (SFE).
Wills and Estate Planning
A Will is one of the most fundamental and important documents you will ever sign; it gives you control, it gives you options and it means that you can give other people opportunities.
Common misconceptions about Wills are that they are too expensive or that a person’s assets are too insignificant to be worth the bother, or that everything will go automatically to a spouse or children in any event. But as a wise man once sang, it ain’t necessarily so … and the only certain way to ensure that your loved ones inherit what you intend is by making a Will.
Having no Will means that the intestacy rules will determine the division of your estate and your beneficiaries may end up sharing your estate with relatives or others whom you never intended to benefit.
Those whom you never intended to benefit may include HM Revenue & Customs or the Local Authority (in the form of care home fees). A Will enables you not only to direct your assets, but also to protect them by the incorporation of trusts.
Trusts
Trusts are an extremely versatile device which can provide a solution to a variety of life’s problems. From inheritance tax to residential care home fees, or even from the profligacy of our loved ones, trusts can be used to protect assets both during our lifetimes and after our deaths. Trusts can also help in managing your business interests and to balance the competing interests of spouses and children. They have a particular relevance in these times of complex family arrangements.
- Estate planning and lifetime gifts
- Protection of children and bereaved spouses
- Warehousing of assets
- Protection of nil rate band for unmarried couples
- Making best possible use of IHT reliefs and exemptions
- Freezing value of appreciable assets
- Protecting assets against care home fees
If you have any enquiries, please contact Hazel Gill or Tessa Bonser – or alternatively please call us on 01603 610911.
