Later Life Legal Services Limited

Estate Planning

What Is Estate Planning?

Estate planning is the process of organising your affairs so that your wishes are carried out during your lifetime and after your death. It brings together legal, financial, and practical arrangements to protect you, your loved ones, and your assets. A well‑structured estate plan provides clarity, reduces uncertainty, and ensures that decisions are made by the people you trust.

Planning for Life and Beyond

Estate planning is not just about what happens after you die. It also covers the steps needed to protect you while you are alive — particularly if illness, accident, or loss of mental capacity affects your ability to make decisions. By planning ahead, you retain control over your affairs and reduce the burden on your family at difficult times.

Key Components of an Estate Plan

A complete estate plan typically includes:

• A Will to set out who should inherit your estate and who should administer it.
• Lasting Powers of Attorney (LPAs) to appoint trusted people to make decisions if you lose capacity.
• Trusts, where appropriate, to protect assets, support vulnerable beneficiaries, or manage wealth across generations.
• Financial planning, including tax considerations, pensions, and lifetime gifting.
• Clear guidance for your family, such as funeral wishes or practical information about your affairs.

Each element plays a different role, but together they form a coherent strategy that reflects your values and priorities.

Protecting Your Loved Ones

Estate planning ensures that the people you care about are provided for in the way you intend. This is especially important for modern families, where relationships and responsibilities may be more complex. Planning ahead helps avoid disputes, ensures fairness, and gives your family confidence that they are following your wishes.

Managing Tax and Costs

Thoughtful estate planning can help reduce the impact of Inheritance Tax and ensure your estate is administered efficiently. This may involve using allowances, structuring gifts, or placing assets into trust. While tax should never be the sole driver of a plan, understanding the implications helps you make informed decisions and preserve more of your estate for future generations.

Preparing for Loss of Capacity

A sudden illness or accident can leave you unable to manage your own affairs. Without LPAs in place, your family may face delays and legal hurdles before they can help you. Estate planning ensures that trusted people are authorised to act on your behalf, protecting your finances, welfare, and dignity.

Providing Clarity and Reducing Stress

A well‑prepared estate plan gives your family clear instructions at a time when they may be grieving or overwhelmed. It reduces uncertainty, avoids unnecessary costs, and ensures that your affairs are handled smoothly and respectfully.

A Living, Evolving Process

Estate planning is not a one‑off exercise. As your circumstances change — through marriage, divorce, children, property purchases, or changes in health — your plan should be reviewed and updated. Regular reviews ensure your arrangements remain accurate, effective, and aligned with your wishes.

Will Planning

Why Making a Will Matters

A Will is one of the most important legal documents you can put in place. It gives you control, clarity, and peace of mind by ensuring that your wishes are followed after your death. Without a valid Will, the law decides who inherits your estate, which may not reflect your intentions or the needs of the people you care about.

Ensuring Your Wishes Are Followed

A Will allows you to decide exactly who should benefit from your estate — family, friends, charities, or others who are important to you. It also lets you specify how your assets should be shared, from property and savings to personal possessions. This avoids uncertainty and helps prevent disagreements at an already difficult time.

Protecting Your Loved Ones

If you have a partner, children, or dependants, a Will is essential. The intestacy rules (which apply when someone dies without a Will) do not recognise unmarried partners, stepchildren, or many modern family arrangements. A Will ensures that the people who rely on you are properly provided for and that vulnerable beneficiaries can be protected through trusts or tailored arrangements.

Appointing Executors and Guardians

Your Will allows you to choose trusted people to act as your executors — the individuals responsible for administering your estate. This is an important role, and choosing the right people can make the process smoother and more efficient.
If you have children under 18, your Will is also the place to appoint guardians. Without this, the decision may fall to the courts, which may not reflect your preferences.

Managing Tax and Costs

A professionally drafted Will can help reduce the impact of Inheritance Tax and ensure your estate is administered as efficiently as possible. Clear instructions can also minimise legal costs and delays, helping your beneficiaries receive their inheritance more quickly.

Planning for Complex or Later‑Life Circumstances

Many people have more complex circumstances than they realise — blended families, business interests, overseas assets, or vulnerable beneficiaries. A Will allows you to address these issues properly.
For later‑life planning, a Will works alongside other arrangements, such as Lasting Powers of Attorney and care‑fee planning, forming part of a comprehensive strategy to protect your estate and your wishes.

Avoiding Disputes

A clear, well‑structured Will reduces the risk of family conflict. By setting out your intentions in writing, you help prevent misunderstandings and provide certainty for those you leave behind.

Keeping Your Will Up to Date

Life changes — marriages, divorces, new relationships, children, property purchases, or changes in financial circumstances. Reviewing your Will regularly ensures it continues to reflect your wishes and remains legally valid.

Trusts

Why Make a Trust?

A trust is a flexible and effective way to protect assets, provide for loved ones, and ensure your wishes are carried out both during your lifetime and after your death. Trusts have been used for centuries to manage wealth responsibly, and they remain a key tool in modern estate planning. They can offer control, protection, and peace of mind in a wide range of personal and financial circumstances.

What Is a Trust?

A trust is a legal arrangement where one or more people (the trustees) hold and manage assets for the benefit of others (the beneficiaries). The person creating the trust — the settlor — sets out the rules and intentions in a trust document. Trusts can hold money, property, investments, or other assets, and they can be tailored to meet specific needs.

Protecting Vulnerable or Young Beneficiaries

One of the most common reasons for creating a trust is to protect beneficiaries who may not be ready or able to manage an inheritance themselves. This includes young children, adults with disabilities, or family members who may be financially inexperienced. A trust allows assets to be managed responsibly until the beneficiary is ready, while still ensuring they are supported.

Providing Long‑Term Family Protection

Trusts can help you look after your family across generations. They allow you to ring‑fence assets so they are used in the way you intend — for education, housing, or general support. They can also help protect family wealth from risks such as divorce, bankruptcy, or beneficiaries' poor financial decisions.

Supporting Blended Families

Modern families are often complex, and trusts can help ensure fairness and clarity. For example, you may want to provide for a current partner while ultimately ensuring assets pass to children from a previous relationship. A trust can balance these interests and reduce the risk of disputes. 

Managing Tax and Estate Planning

While trusts are not a way to avoid tax, they can help manage tax liabilities and ensure assets are passed on efficiently. Certain types of trusts can help with Inheritance Tax planning, provide structure for business assets, or support long‑term financial strategies. Professional advice is essential to ensure that the trust is set up correctly and remains compliant. 

Providing Control and Flexibility

A trust allows you to set out how and when assets should be used. You can give trustees wide discretion to respond to changing circumstances, or you can provide detailed instructions. This flexibility makes trusts suitable for a wide range of situations, from simple family arrangements to more complex estates. 

Planning for the Future

Trusts can be created during your lifetime or written into your Will. They can provide continuity, ensuring that your wishes are followed even if you lose capacity or after you pass away. When combined with a Will and Lasting Powers of Attorney, a trust can form part of a comprehensive later‑life and estate‑planning strategy.

Lasting Power of Attorney

Why Make a Lasting Power of Attorney?

A Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA) is a vital part of later‑life planning. It allows you to choose trusted people to make decisions on your behalf if, at any point in the future, you become unable to make those decisions yourself. Without an LPA, your family may face delays, uncertainty, and significant cost at a time when you are most vulnerable.

Planning Ahead for Peace of Mind

Mental capacity can be lost gradually, such as through dementia, or suddenly due to illness or accident. An LPA ensures that, whatever happens, the people you trust are legally authorised to act for you. It provides clarity and reassurance for you and your loved ones, helping avoid crisis‑driven decisions.

Choosing Who Will Act for You

An LPA lets you appoint one or more attorneys — people you trust to act in your best interests. You can choose family members, friends, or professionals, and you can set out how they should work together. This gives you control and flexibility, ensuring that decisions are made by those who understand your wishes and values.

Two Types of LPA

There are two forms of LPA, each covering different areas of your life:

• Property and Financial Affairs LPA
  This allows your attorneys to manage your finances — paying bills, dealing with banks, managing investments, selling property, and handling everyday money matters. You can choose whether it can be used immediately (with your consent) or only if you lose capacity.

• Health and Welfare LPA
  This covers decisions about your care, daily routine, medical treatment, and where you live. It can only be used if you lose mental capacity, ensuring your wishes are respected when you cannot express them yourself.

Many people choose to put both LPAs in place to ensure complete protection.

Avoiding Court Delays and Costs

If you lose capacity without an LPA, your family cannot automatically make decisions for you — even if they are your next of kin. Instead, they may need to apply to the Court of Protection for a deputyship order. This process is slower, more expensive, and more restrictive than having an LPA. Creating an LPA in advance avoids these difficulties and ensures continuity in managing your affairs.

Supporting Your Wishes and Independence

An LPA allows you to record preferences and instructions, giving your attorneys clear guidance. This helps ensure decisions reflect your values, beliefs, and lifestyle. It also reduces the risk of disagreements or uncertainty among family members.

A Key Part of Later‑Life Planning

LPAs work alongside your Will, financial planning, and care‑fee planning to form a complete strategy for protecting your future. They are not just for older people — anyone can lose capacity unexpectedly, and putting an LPA in place early ensures you remain in control.

Tax Planning

What Is Tax Planning?

Tax planning is the process of arranging your financial affairs in a lawful and efficient way so that you do not pay more tax than necessary. For many people, the two most significant taxes affecting their estate and long‑term wealth are Inheritance Tax (IHT) and Capital Gains Tax (CGT). Thoughtful planning can help reduce the impact of these taxes, protect family assets, and ensure that more of your wealth passes to the people you care about.

Understanding Inheritance Tax

Inheritance Tax is charged on the value of your estate when you die, and in some cases on gifts made during your lifetime. The standard rate is 40% on the value above the available allowances and reliefs. While thresholds and reliefs can change over time, IHT remains a major consideration for families, particularly where property values have risen.

Effective IHT planning involves understanding the allowances available — such as the nil‑rate band and residence nil‑rate band — and how they apply to your circumstances. It may also involve lifetime gifting, the use of trusts, or structuring your estate to make the best use of exemptions. Professional guidance is essential, as rules can be complex and are subject to change.

Understanding Capital Gains Tax

Capital Gains Tax applies when you dispose of an asset that has increased in value — such as property, shares, or investments. The tax is charged on the gain, not the total sale proceeds. Recent changes have increased the main CGT rates for individuals and trustees, and the annual exemption has been significantly reduced, meaning more people are now brought into the CGT system. CGT planning often involves timing disposals, using available allowances, transferring assets between spouses or civil partners, or structuring ownership in a tax‑efficient way. For business owners, specific reliefs may apply, although some of these have been tightened in recent years. 

How IHT and CGT Interact

IHT and CGT often overlap. For example, gifting an asset during your lifetime may reduce the value of your estate for IHT purposes, but it may also trigger a CGT charge if the asset has gained in value. Conversely, assets passed on at death are generally exempt from CGT at that point, but may increase the IHT liability. Balancing these two regimes is a key part of effective tax planning.

Protecting Family Wealth

Tax planning is not about avoiding tax — it is about ensuring that your affairs are structured sensibly and fairly. For many families, this means:

• Making use of allowances and exemptions
• Considering lifetime gifts
• Using trusts where appropriate
• Reviewing ownership of property and investments
• Ensuring Wills and LPAs support the overall plan
• Keeping arrangements under review as rules and circumstances change

A Long-Term, Evolving Strategy

Tax rules change regularly, as seen in recent adjustments to CGT rates and IHT thresholds. A good tax plan is therefore reviewed periodically to ensure it remains effective. By planning, you can reduce uncertainty, protect your estate, and give your family clarity and confidence for the future.

Your Home

Asset Protection and Property Ownership

Asset protection is the process of organising your financial and personal affairs to safeguard your wealth for the future. It involves understanding how your assets are owned, how they can be passed on, and how best to protect them from risks such as family disputes, care‑fee assessments, or unexpected life events. Property ownership is often central to this planning, as your home is usually one of your most valuable assets.

Understanding Asset Protection

Asset protection is not about hiding assets or avoiding legitimate obligations. Instead, it focuses on sensible, lawful steps to ensure your estate is preserved and used in the way you intend. This may involve reviewing how your property is owned, using trusts where appropriate, and ensuring your Will and other arrangements support your long‑term goals.

Good asset protection planning can help:

• Provide for your spouse or partner
• Protect children from previous relationships
• Safeguard assets for vulnerable beneficiaries
• Reduce the risk of disputes
• Ensure your estate is passed on efficiently and fairly

How Property Ownership Affects Your Estate

The way you own your home has a significant impact on what happens to it when you die. In the UK, there are two main forms of joint property ownership: joint tenancy and tenants in common. Understanding the difference is essential for effective estate planning.

Joint Tenancy

Under a joint tenancy, each owner holds the whole property together. There are no defined shares. If one owner dies, their interest automatically passes to the surviving owner(s) through the right of survivorship, regardless of what their Will says. Joint tenancy is common for married couples and long‑term partners who want the property to pass automatically to the survivor. However, it may not be suitable where:

• You have children from a previous relationship
• You want to leave your share to someone other than your co‑owner
• You wish to protect your share of the property for future generations

In these situations, a different form of ownership may be more appropriate.

Tenants in Common

With tenants in common, each owner holds a defined share of the property — often 50/50, but it can be any proportion. Crucially, each owner can leave their share to whoever they choose in their Will.

This structure is often used when:

• Partners want to protect their respective shares for their own children
• Owners contribute unequal amounts to the purchase
• A trust is being used as part of wider estate or asset protection planning

Tenants in common can offer greater flexibility and control, particularly for blended families or more complex estates.

Using Ownership Structure for Asset Protection

Changing from joint tenancy to tenants in common — known as severing the joint tenancy — is a common step in estate planning. It allows your share of the property to pass into a trust or directly to chosen beneficiaries, rather than automatically to the surviving owner.

This can help:

• Protect your share of the home for your children
• Provide for a surviving partner while safeguarding long‑term inheritance
• Support wider tax and estate planning strategies

A Key Part of Your Overall Plan

Property ownership, Wills, trusts, and tax planning all work together. Reviewing how your assets are structured ensures your estate is protected, your wishes are respected, and your family is supported in the way you intend.

Executor & Trustee Bank Accounts

We provide executors and trustees with access to intermediation for suitable bank accounts. Banks are strict about the estates and trusts they will accept.

• All executors and trustees must be UK residents. Banks will not accept applications from any executors and trustees residing outside the UK.
• All executors, settlors, trustees and named beneficiaries must provide identity and address verification. We require certified copies of a valid UK Passport or UK Driving Licence as evidence of identity. Verification of address can be one of the following: a utility bill, a council tax statement, an HMRC notification, a credit card/mortgage statement, or a UK bank statement that is no more than 3 months old.
• For executor bank accounts, a certified copy of the Death Certificate and Grant of Probate/Letters of Administration is required.
• For trustee bank accounts, a certified copy of the original trust deed and subsequent deeds of appointment are required. 
• Where applicable, TRS registration verification is also required.

The work is in processing the application form in readiness for submission to the bank. The quantum of trust funds is irrelevant. The number of settlors, trustees, and beneficiariesdetermines our fee, which is £102 per person for a current account.  Additional accounts, such as interest-bearing deposits or fixed-term bonds, are charged an additional 50% per account. Please see the section on Fees for further information. 

Process

1. An initial consultation by telephone, video call, or in person is free, without obligation, and strictly confidential. 
2. Once we understand your requirements, we can provide you with our Estate Planning Report and Quote.
3. We charge fixed fees payable on instruction. Please see the section on Fees for further information. 
4. Our services can be cancelled at any time without charge.  We will refund you for incomplete work. A full refund is provided for cancellation within the first 14 days.
5. We are required to verify the identity and address of all prospective clients. This may be satisfied by the sight of a valid UK Passport or Driving Licence, or we may use a third-party electronic identity verification service.
6. We prefer not to receive or send sensitive information by email or by post.  Exchanges of secure messages and documents require clients to register for use of our Client Portal.
7. Once we have received your instructions, verified your identity, and you have registered for our secure Client Portal, we can commence our advice and the drafting of your legal documents.
8. Our advice and provision of documents are transactional.  Any subsequent advice that is separate from the initial advice is chargeable, details of which are provided in advance of further work being undertaken.    

About

We advise on Estate Planning to protect your assets, businesses, wealth and family from potential risks such as:

Divorce 

Remarriage 

Creditors/Bankruptcy

Loss of capacity

Paying for Long-Term care

Inter-generational Inheritance Tax (IHT)

Capital Gains Tax (CGT)

Beneficiaries - Poor health or lifestyle choices

Vulnerable Beneficiaries

We draw on over 30 years of experience, supported by a network of colleagues and specialists, delivering a highly personalised service throughout the United Kingdom. 

We successfully advise many clients in your situation. These include individuals, attorneys, court-appointed deputies, trustees and charities. We have a wealth of experience and expertise to draw on when advising clients, and we look forward to hearing from you.

Later Life Legal Services Limited is not regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) because we do not carry out activities requiring SRA regulation.

We focus our advice on estate planning, which is not a regulated activity. However, we are subject to consumer protection law, as enforced by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).