Wealth, Health and Inheritance Briefing

Winter 2022/3 edition

It’s been an unsettled time in many ways in recent months and the tax burden due from clients has vacillated from the mini-Budget to the Autumn Statement. Inheritance tax thresholds have been frozen yet again and we take a brief look at the consequences of this.

Also in this issue:

• The introduction of new legislation means that the process of modernising Lasting Powers of Attorney is underway. We report on the Powers of Attorney Bill and the government’s response to replies to its consultation on modernisation.
• Foreign assets can cause complications when administering an estate and we look at whether multiple Wills are advisable and a danger of these as illustrated by a recent High Court case.
• Our Contentious Private Client team recently acted in a Supreme Court case which sets an important precedent in framing the remedy in proprietary estoppel cases. We examine the judgment.
• Many of your clients may not have reviewed their Wills for many years and they may contain provisions which are no longer as popular. We outline the most common of these and whether action is needed to remove them.

We hope you enjoy the rest of the summer. The next edition of WHIB will be published in the autumn, but in the meantime any feedback is always appreciated.

We hope that you enjoy this issue. Feedback is, as always, welcome.

Our next issue will be in Spring so in the interim we wish everyone a very happy New Year.

Anthony Fairweather

In this edition

Private Client: The mini-Budget and Autumn Statement

Over the last few months it has been difficult to know what the taxation position in 2023/24 will be for many private clients as we have ricocheted from abolition of the additional rate of income tax to its retention with a lowered threshold, and from a cut in basic rate income tax to the freezing of income tax thresholds for some years to come… Read more

Modernising Lasting Powers of Attorney

Earlier this year the responses to the Government’s consultation on modernising Lasting Powers of Attorney (LPA) were published. The project was launched in response to public feedback that the LPA creation process is “cumbersome, bureaucratic and complex” and its purpose was to gather evidence on how best to modernise LPAs… Read more

The danger area of multiple Wills

It was common practice, particularly before the introduction of the EU Succession regulation, for a client to make multiple Wills if they owned assets in more than one jurisdiction. In these circumstances it is always important to ensure that the provisions of the Wills do not contradict one another, and that one Will does not inadvertently revoke another… Read more

Reviewing your client’s Will

When a wealth planner or financial adviser takes on a new client it is usual to ask to see the client’s Will if they have one in place. Although we recommend that Wills should be reviewed every five years, or on a major change of circumstances, clients may have Wills that were drawn up some time ago. Recent changes could have an impact on how the Will has been drafted or trigger a full scale re-consideration of the terms of the Will… Read more

Farmer successful in significant inheritance dispute case

Clarke Willmott acted for farmer Andrew Guest in a long-running and significant inheritance dispute case between Andrew and his parents which has now ended in the Supreme Court’s recent judgment…. Read more