During your lifetime much can be done to preserve family wealth and ease the tax burden on those left behind. We can also help you protect venerable beneficiaries in the future.

At Wards, we specialise in providing wealth preservation advice, tailored to your particular circumstances, which helps you minimise tax liabilities and maximise tax reliefs. Our team of qualified and experienced lawyers aims to make the process as comprehensive and comprehensible as possible.

Our lawyers include members of the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners, of Solicitors for the Elderly and of The Law Society’s Probate section. Very few local law firms have such qualifications, which are mark of our specialism and expertise.

Our services
We offer:

• Will-making
• Long term care planning
• Planning for a potential future inability to manage your own affairs via a Lasting Power of Attorney
• Protecting assets for beneficiaries who are disabled or not good with money
• Charitable donations
• Creating and administering Trusts
• Inheritance Tax and Capital Gains Tax mitigation

Estate planning

Inheritance Tax may be payable at 40% on an estate worth more than £300,000. By the tax year 2010-2011 this figure will rise in stages to £350,000. Often your house alone is worth more than that. However, with careful planning, the burden can be substantially reduced. This includes using lifetime exemptions, trusts and taking independent financial planning advice.

Trusts can provide a tax-efficient method of protecting family assets, whilst enabling them to pass between generations. In addition, donations can be made to individuals and charities, both in your lifetime and afterwards, in a tax-efficient way. All these methods can be used to preserve wealth and ease the financial burden in the event of death.

Lifetime gifts

One way to minimise Inheritance Tax payable on death is to reduce the amount of money in your estate. If you give it away, however, you can become liable to tax. You may make gifts of money or assets in any tax year without paying tax and you can give small amounts away to individuals or make specified gifts, for example, on marriage. If you survive for 7 years after transferring an asset, your beneficiaries will not have to pay tax on the transfer.

However, it is important not to retain a benefit in the asset being transferred. At Wards, we can provide you with expert advice on how to ensure that any such transfer is tax-efficient.

Trusts

A Trust, created during a person’s lifetime or by a Will, is a way of giving property to someone on the basis that they will look after it for the benefit of others – usually one or more beneficiaries. The property, or assets, of the Trust are held by trustees (named in the Trust Deed) for these beneficiaries.

Trustees must follow strict rules regulating what they can and cannot do with the Trust and are answerable to the court, so protecting the beneficiaries. Trustees should be fully aware of their powers, and in our increasingly litigious society, are advised to take legal advice before agreeing to act as a trustee.

Why create a Trust?

A Trust can be used to place someone into a more advantageous financial situation, or to protect the finances of someone unable to do that for him or herself. Trusts can:

• Mitigate Inheritance Tax, Capital Gains Tax and Income Tax.
• Protect children and grandchildren, perhaps providing for their educational or maintenance needs.
• Protect special needs beneficiaries by providing a source of income and capital but leaving means-tested state benefits unaffected.
• Protect a spendthrift beneficiary or one who might be put under pressure to give assets away.
• Provide financial support for good causes by the creation of charitable Trusts.
• Preserve family wealth for future generations.
• To protect children from previous relationships.

Wards’ Trust services
We can:

• Advise you about creation of the best Trust for you and your family.
• Draft all types of Trust.
• Act as ‘arms-length’ trustees, to manage any conflicts.
• Administer your Trust, including the filing of annual Inland Revenue returns and accounts. We will hold trustee meetings, actively review investments and ensure the best performance of the assets for the beneficiaries.
• Give advice in respect of trustee duties. The Trustee Act 2000 brought new opportunities but also highlighted the need for trustees to be proactive.
• Regularly review investments, liaising with qualified financial planners and stockbrokers.
• Give existing Trusts a professional review. This might include checking the practical implications of the Trustee Act 2000 are in place and whether the trustees are complying with the law, as well as considering the best future options for the Trust fund. 

Contact us
In the first instance, contact Jenny Pierce, who is head of our Tax and Trusts team, and she will either help you herself, or put you in touch with a team member at an office local to you. E-mail Jenny or telephone her on 0117 929 2811.