Virtual Conference: Wills, Probate and Advising the Elderly Update 2021: Recorded 26th October 2021: 09.30:17.00

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KEY SUBJECTS

• CAPITAL TAX UPDATE
• WILLS DRAFTING PROBLEMS
• PROBATE AND TRUST PRACTICE: UPDATE ON THE BIG CHANGES
• TIPS AND TRAPS ON THE ADMINISTRATION OF ESTATES
• LATER LIFE PLANNING – WHERE CAPACITY IS INTACT
• ELDERLY CLIENTS: RESOLVING PROBLEMS AND LOOKING FORWARD

SPEAKERS

John Bunker, Solicitor, Chartered Tax Adviser and Lecturer

Professor Lesley King, Professional Development Consultant, University of Law

Jacqui Lazare, Senior Associate, Clarke Willmott LLP

Caroline Bielanska, Solicitor, TEP, Independent Consultant, Mediator, Author and Trainer

PROGRAMME

9.30am CHAIRMAN’S INTRODUCTION

CAPITAL TAX UPDATE

This talk will explore tax developments and IHT/CGT planning ideas. The presentation will bring you up to date on any changes which are brought into effect from any further budgets which occur prior to the conference.

• The 3 March Budget did not make a lot of changes on personal tax, leaving tough tax choices to a second Autumn 2021 Budget, or perhaps to 2022. With changes to IHT & CGT in the firing line, what planning with wills and estates can clients do? The focus will be on mainstream planning that can work.
• The Office of Tax Simplification (OTS)’s second report on CGT in May 2021: what key proposals were made and what is the current thinking on their ideas to restrict “CGT uplift” on death etc?

John Bunker, Solicitor, Chartered Tax Adviser and Lecturer

WILL DRAFTING PROBLEMS

A number of recent cases have illustrated the awful problems that result when drafting goes wrong. Good will drafting should be easy for the client to understand but, even more importantly, it should create a document that carries out the client’s wishes without ambiguity and uncertainty. This session looks at common problems and how to avoid them. In particular it will look at:

• Problems with instructions
  • Documentation and cross-checking
• Use of definitions
• Do you need a governing law clause?
• Flexible life interests:
  • Benefits
  • Drafting issues
  • Pitfalls
• Options to purchase and conditional gifts:
  • When are they useful?
  • What are the traps?
• RNRB issues
  • Do you need to worry when drafting?

Professor Lesley King, Professional Development Consultant, University of Law

PROBATE AND TRUST PRACTICE: UPDATE ON THE BIG CHANGES

This update will focus on 3 big private client practice developments due between Summer 2021 and January 2022. Whether you mainly supervise staff doing the detailed work, or do the processing yourself, what are the changes that will affect your practice?

• Probate applications – some big improvements to the much criticised digital process are coming from end June onwards; this talk will consider:
  • where we have now reached, what you can and can’t do online
  • the changes to allow different people to work on one file, and make “partners of the Firm” applications easier
  • some tips for making digital applications work better
• Inland Revenue accounts – the changes due for deaths from 1 Jan 2022, to cut substantial numbers of non-tax paying estates doing IHT forms:
  • With the potential end of the IHT 205, when do you still have to do an IHT 400?
  • What more is needed in the digital process, where more tax info may be needed?
  • What needs doing about changes in values after the application?
• Trust Register (TRS): non-taxable “registerable express trusts” – the new rules to put onto TRS, due to be fully implemented by September, including:
  • What guidance does the new TRS Manual, from HMRC, give us on how to understand the new rules and our obligations?
  • What do practitioners need to do with new and old files before Summer 2022?
  • How this relates to probate work, estate planning, joint ownership of property and wills & estates disputes

John Bunker has been in meetings with HMCTS on Probate, since April 2020, and with HMRC on the TRS Manual, advising on content, so can speak with some insight re what is happening.

John Bunker, Solicitor, Chartered Tax Adviser and Lecturer

TIPS AND TRAPS ON THE ADMINISTRATION OF ESTATES

This session will look at a number of difficult areas when administering estates:

• What to do when a will you have drafted is challenged
• Use of post-death variations
  • What they can and can’t do
• Partly exempt transfers and grossing up
  • When and how
• Getting rid of unwanted NRB trusts
  • Is it really unwanted?
  • How to do it

Professor Lesley King, Professional Development Consultant, University of Law

LATER LIFE PLANNING – WHERE CAPACITY IS INTACT

This talk is aimed at qualified wills and probate and private client practitioners and will look at the following areas which arise when advising elderly clients, where capacity is intact:

• Starting point: What options are on the table and what may be off for these clients – such as importance of retaining access to capital and/or income and taking into account their overall circumstances and wishes
• Special consideration of estate planning issues facing elderly business owners
• How to mitigate cybersecurity issues facing advisors for the elderly client
• Update of key estate planning provisions and analysis of when they can and cannot still be of use to these clients – such as lifetime exemptions
• The impact of electronic Wills and holograph Wills for the elderly client

Jacqui Lazare, Senior Associate, Clarke Willmott LLP

ELDERLY CLIENTS: RESOLVING PROBLEMS AND LOOKING FORWARD

An increasing number of lay attorneys are being investigated by the OPG and are required to make applications for retrospective approval of gifts which have been made; get it wrong and the attorney could be removed. Better guidance is needed, which may appear in the forthcoming Mental Capacity Code of Practice update, which is planned to include the new Liberty Protection Safeguards. The OPG continues to work on modernising LPAs, with the hope that safeguards will be enhanced, but what is being overlooked? The case of R (SH) v Norfolk County Council and another [2020] EWHC 3436 (Admin) is having ramifications for local authorities who will need to ensure clients who live in their own home have enough to live on. Advisers will need to make sure their client’s local authority is following the law.

• Responding to an investigation
• Retrospective application to the Court of Protection
• Revising the MCA Code of Practice
• Modernising LPAs- scope for improvements?
• The local authority means test- does your client have enough to live on?
• Roundup on health and social care news

Caroline Bielanska, Solicitor, TEP, Independent Consultant, Mediator, Author and Trainer

5.00 pm CLOSE OF PROCEEDINGS