Jennifer Charlton

Jennifer is a Partner based in our Bristol office specialising in wealth and estate planning within our Private Capital team.

Jennifer has over 15 years of experience in advising families, individuals, business owners and trustees in wealth and estate planning and protection having qualified as a solicitor in 2009.  She joined the firm in July 2025 from London and South East firm DMH Stallard. She advises on a broad range of private client matters including tax planning, succession planning, Wills, trusts and lasting powers of attorney.

Jennifer acts for a wide range of family businesses, entrepreneurs and owner managers, wealthy families and individuals and helps them to structure their wealth in accordance with their priorities and goals be that tax mitigation, long term protection or simplicity.

How Jennifer can help you

Jennifer supports her clients to implement, tailored, practical succession plans that reduce the risk of family quarrels, balancing the desire to protect wealth for the long term but at the same time supporting younger generations to succeed on their own terms.

As part of wealth and estate planning for clients, Jennifer spends her time preparing Wills for clients incorporating protective trusts and tax mitigation proposals, to best suit a client’s financial and family requirements. In guiding families and individuals through wealth protection and tax mitigation options, Jennifer also advises on lifetime gifting to support the next generation, both directly and through the use of trusts and family investment companies.

Jennifer’s clients are based both in the UK and internationally and usually have assets located in other jurisdictions. Jennifer works with professional advisers in other jurisdictions to ensure that clients have estate planning that works worldwide.

Jennifer has a particular interest and experience in the creation and administration of family investment companies and trusts. The creation of lifetime vehicles such as these can protect assets, provide long term financial benefit to beneficiaries and can facilitate the speedy administration of estates.

Experience

• Assisting a married couple facing a large Inheritance Tax liability. Recommending a change to the ownership of their home and preparing a declaration of trust implementing that change. Preparing new Wills to include an outright gift of the residence nil rate band on first death, a discretionary trust of the nil rate band on first death and the balance of the estate to the survivor of them both. These changes along with a schedule of lifetime gifting for the surviving spouse, reduced their expected inheritance tax liability by several hundred thousand pounds.
• Advising on the creation of a family investment company (FIC) for a client with a portfolio of properties in his sole name which were not profitable or tax efficient as currently structured.  We created a 10 year plan to transfer properties into the FIC as they became eligible for remortgage. We carved out different share classes to keep future growth outside of the client’s estate for Inheritance Tax purposes but ensured that control stayed with the client for the longer term.  The client was able to create a long term meaningful legacy for the future benefit of his family.
• Arranging the gift of part of the family home to reduce Inheritance Tax. Prior to the recent budget the client had a tax efficient estate, but with the inclusion of pensions for Inheritance Tax purposes from April 2027 looked to have a large potential Inheritance Tax liability.  The client had no liquid funds with which to plan so we prepared a gift of part of the family home to the client’s children with co-ownership provisions for the client’s ongoing protection.  We ensured that rental payments at market rates were built into the agreement so that no benefit was reserved for Inheritance Tax purposes.

Jennifer is a full member of the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners (STEP), the world’s leading organisation for private wealth professionals.