Protecting wealth. Planning beyond a lifetime.
We understand you, your family, your assets and your objectives as a whole. Inheritance tax, family investment companies, trusts and bespoke structuring for families whose affairs have outgrown standard advice.
The position
Inheritance tax planning is about more than reducing a future liability
For many families it is about deciding how wealth should be preserved, managed and passed on — and about creating opportunities to support children and future generations during your lifetime, rather than only after it.
Early and considered planning provides greater flexibility over when and how wealth is transferred: helping children with property, providing capital for future opportunities, supporting the development of a family business, or establishing a longer-term framework for managing family wealth.
We advise on inheritance tax and succession as part of the wider family picture — existing assets, business interests, investments, family circumstances and long-term objectives. That may involve family investment companies, trusts, lifetime giving or bespoke structures, with proper attention to control and flexibility as well as tax.
The right answer differs from one family to another. Our role is to understand what you want your wealth to achieve, and to build a strategy that reflects it.
What we advise on
Private client services
Inheritance tax planning
Understanding the exposure before choosing the answer. Lifetime giving, reliefs, the family home, business and agricultural property, and the interaction between them.
Family investment companies
Passing value while keeping control. Share classes, funding, governance and the long-term income position — with the drawbacks set out as clearly as the advantages.
Trusts and estate structuring
Establishing, reviewing and where necessary unwinding trusts. Entry, ten-year and exit charges modelled properly rather than assumed.
Bespoke planning
Where the circumstances do not match a category. Most of our private client work begins here.
Private clients
Some exposure is best simply accepted
Where the projected liability is modest against the cost and complexity of planning, we say so. That answer is free.
How we advise
Understand, then structure
01
Understand
The assets, the family, the objectives and the constraints. Including the ones that are not about tax.
02
Analyse
The current exposure quantified, and the cost of doing nothing set alongside the cost of acting.
03
Structure
Options with their disadvantages stated, and a recommendation. In writing, so it can be considered rather than agreed in a meeting.
04
Implement
Documentation prepared with your solicitors, clearances obtained where available, filings dealt with.
05
Review
Structures outlive the legislation they were built under. We revisit them rather than leaving them to age.
Worth saying plainly
Not every family needs a structure
Some exposure is best simply accepted
Where the projected liability is modest against the cost and complexity of planning, we say so. That answer is free.
Control given away is given away
Most inheritance tax planning depends on genuinely parting with value. Arrangements that keep the benefit rarely work, and we will not build them.
Legislation moves
Reliefs relied on today may narrow. We tell you which parts of a plan are robust and which depend on the law staying as it is.
Start with a conversation.
Whether you are considering a transaction, protecting family wealth, dealing with an international matter or facing an HMRC investigation, we can help you understand the position and decide the appropriate next step.