Estate Planning

Estate Planning is the process of arranging your assets to suit your immediate and long term financial obligations and plans. This can be done taking advantage of:

Lifetime Planning

The essence of Lifetime Planning is to offload excess financial weight from your estate and this is best done using Gifts and Trusts throughout your lifetime.

Will Planning

It is never too early to consider the advantages of Inheritance Tax (IHT) mitigation. Your Will can carefully manage your assets by utilizing any benefits from gifting to exempt beneficiaries so that they do not acquire additional Inheritance Tax (IHT) liability.

Inheritance Tax (IHT)

There is a commonly held belief that if you live abroad you have no tax liabilities in the United Kingdom on death. This is almost certainly not the case and taxation and unexpected HMRC (Inland Revenue) demands could seriously deplete assets, assets you have planned to pass onto your partner and children.

For Estates that do not exceed £325,000 single or £650,000 per married couple (known as the Nil Rate Band) there is no need to be overly concerned. However, as soon as your world-wide estate value begins to approach these figures then you need to be aware of potential liabilities when HMRC (The Inland Revenue) can inadvertently become a beneficiary of your Will.

There are number of tax saving options provided by HMRC that are useful and should be taken advantage of.

TRUSTS

With the rising value of estates, compounded by rising houses prices and death-in-service benefits, estates are becoming more complex and potentially subject to punitive capital tax liabilities. A trust can be a useful planning tool to mitigate such liabilities by offloading excess assets.

We advise an initial discussion to establish your current position, existing liabilities and future financial plans.

When in doubt, seek advice and plan early.