Planning for your estate to pass to your beneficiaries, reducing inheritance tax

Estates: Your Will online forever

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Estates: Your Will online forever

You may not be aware that the Government has now made it possible to search for Wills online. So once you are gone, your last Will and testament is available for anyone to see, should they wish to. Essentially it is nothing more than a searchable database which enables anyone to pay £10 to obtain an electronic copy of historic Wills, assuming the system works, you will receive your copy within about 10 days. It is free to search, but the Will itself costs £10.

It is estimated that there are over 41 million Wills and Grants of Probate on the database, which are compiled from 1858 onwards for England and Wales. I’m reminded of the film “Waking Ned Devine” which is a comedy about a man who wins the lottery but dies from shock, to collect his winnings, he has to be alive, leaving his community to concoct some creative solutions.

Implications

There will be some people who certainly won’t relish the prospect of their Will being published online – perhaps a few celebrities or even Royalty. Remember that for some people a Will reveals the state of family relationships at the point the Will was made.

HMRC better informed?

Perhaps the more important point about a Will or Grant of Probate is that assets are valued and those that are inherited ought to be more visible. This essentially provides a money trail for HMRC to follow. Remember evading tax is illegal, but with this approach it really ought to be the case that HMRC are able to now close in on those that don’t declare sufficient assets in their estate.

There are also implications for capital gains tax too – if you inherit an asset, then unless you sell it, or gift it, there is reasonable grounds to assume that you still own it. If it disappears from your asset inventory, surely questions would be asked which have a knock on effect for prospect of unpaid capital gains tax and perhaps even income tax (if the asset generated income). In short, anyone that isn’t being crystal clear about their assets is likely to come under greater scrutiny.

Other implications also revolve around more “joined up thinking” in that your DVLA licence and car insurance are connected and if you now try to rent or hire a car, you need to input your NI number so that a DVLA permission certificate can be generated. This could be used to link to your investments (pensions and ISAs in particular) but why not your household insurance policy, meant to insure your physical assets.

All in all, I think this will lead to deeper and better information about us all, which will to some extent be publicly available, but more importantly available to HMRC. So make sure you declare your assets and taxes properly. Above all make sure your Will is current and reflects your wishes.

Dominic Thomas
Solomons IFA

You can read more articles about Pensions, Wealth Management, Retirement, Investments, Financial Planning and Estate Planning on my blog which gets updated every week. If you would like to talk to me about your personal wealth planning and how we can make you stay wealthier for longer then please get in touch by calling 08000 736 273 or email info@solomonsifa.co.uk

Estates: Your Will online foreverDominic2023-12-01T12:40:15+00:00

Estates: What do I do when someone close dies?

Like most people, this is something that I have experienced personally on several occassions. Everyone says that when someone dies, “its a difficult time” – it is, but having just read a link from a follower on Twitter, clearly there are some organisations that are actually making life coping with death even harder. I’m fully aware that this is a morbid topic, invariably one that is met with humour, but of course it is deeply personal, highly sensitive and one that we all have to address.

Most of us do not get to time to organise our final farewells, but some do, this is perhaps the one of the few positives from a mortal illness or disease. However that doesn’t lessen the pain or the very real experience that “money” isn’t top of the to-do list. In fact in my experience with clients, “money” is never at the top of any “to-do” list. As you may know I like to draw connections with movies, I can only say that the WH Auden poem read at the funeral in “Four Weddngs and a Funeral” captures something of grief that few movies achieve.

Order, comfort and relief

One of the elements of service that a good financial planner brings is a sense of order to finances. Personally I favour simplicity and as people get older they tend to want less nuance, preferring something that is very easy to monitor and manage. Having your financial details available for you and your potential beneficiaries readily available is a genuine relief. Clarity of what you have, where it is and who needs to be spoken to is hugely undervalued. Just pause for a moment and ask yourself if you would value this now? who knows where all your important “stuff” is? Is it difficult even for you to remember what you have?

Reviewing your Will and ensuring that the Executors know their responsibilities (and can be helped with them) undoubtedly makes grief much less burdened by the practicalities of “the aftermath”. Its odd that only yesterday I was on a training day about Trusts – which when used properly can really help with estate planning, but naturally requires quite a lot of forward planning, but whether you need a Trust or not, the questions posed about your own death and how your estate and affairs are to be managed are applicable to most people. Whenever someone dies their estate needs “settling” which means giving an accurate account to all connected parties, including HMRC and the dreaded Probate and inheritance tax forms.

May I suggest that you read this personal article by Victoria Bischoff, a journalist at the Daily Mail who writes movingly and succinctly about the problems that she and her family faced despite her mother’s highly organised affairs. The link is here. I have been through the process personally and am aware of how what should be simple, becomes unnecessarily difficult.

Dominic Thomas
Solomons IFA

Estates: What do I do when someone close dies?Dominic2023-12-01T12:40:11+00:00

When Values Are Challenged – Paying The Price

When Values Are Challenged – Paying The Price?

Every once in a while you get the sense that someone is valued for the wrong things. This occurred to me as I watched a special preview of a new George Clooney movie “The Descendants“. Mr Clooney is probably known to most for his debonair looks and appeal to women – which is not really in question, but much more importantly, the guy is a really good actor and makes some cracking movies, yet this often seems to be overlooked by film critics. In time, I believe his work will make him one of the great movie stars. Anyhow, the new movie is about how a family come to terms with a very real crisis. I won’t give the plot away, but it touches on key themes about the choices we make, the paths we follow and their consequences. This is examined within the context of a family living in “paradise” (Hawaii) and loosely plays with the ideas of inheritance. A good line that struck a chord with me was “I believe that you should give your children enough money to do something, but not enough to do nothing”. A pretty good piece of advice when it comes to inheritance planning and something that George’s character Matt King, finds woefully lacking in his extended family as the majority of them squander what they have and fail to understand the meaning of entrust or steward.

The film, directed by Alexander Payne, is not on general release here in the UK until 27th January next year, but when it comes out, it is well worth a look.

Dominic Thomas
Solomons IFA

When Values Are Challenged – Paying The PriceDominic2023-12-01T12:48:55+00:00

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