LAWSKILLS
LATEST POLL QUESTION
Cohabitants & the intestacy rules
Do you approve of the Law Commission's suggestion to include cohabitants in the intestacy rules?
The LawSkills team aim to inspire all private client practitioners to succeed in the new marketplace for legal services. LawSkills offers an invaluable consultancy resource to law firms and practitioners who want to provide a more informed, relevant service for their clients and staff.
Our training and professional development programmes are tailored to equip lawyers with all the skills they’ll ever need to negotiate and administer the complexities of Wills, Probate, Trusts & Tax law with confidence and certainty.
LawSkills. Helping Lawyers Manage
SUBSCRIBE TO LAWSKILLSSPEAKERS' CORNER
Protecting potential development value from IHT and CGT
It can be argued that all land and most buildings have a degree of potential development or “hope” value. There will always be some opportunity to “grow” more houses, improve buildings and convert barns etc. What protection can be put in place for both inheritance tax (IHT) and capital gains tax (CGT)?
LAWYER'S OPINION
Costs in Contentious & Non-contentious Probate & IPFD Act 1975 - Part 2
Following on from Part 1 (published in December 2009), Part 2 lists more precedents and principles to help recover the maximum amount of costs.
PERSONAL FINANCE
Discounted Gift Trusts (Part II): The Potential Disadvantages of a DGT into a Discretionary Trust
[In the last article we discussed how these work and their advantages].
The gifted Relevant Property (the settled trust fund minus the “carved out” discount) is now a CLT, not a PET as previously. If this Relevant Property value exceeds any exemptions and the settlor’s remaining NRB, there will be an immediate IHT charge on the excess at 20%, or 25% if the settlor pays the IHT.
PRACTICE MANAGEMENT
Four essential tips on how to increase your business for as little as £1 for each client
The problem Lawyers face is that people in general don’t have to come to them time and time again, as they do to, say, an Accountant. Nor do they wake up in the morning and say to themselves “I have a great bank balance at the moment, I think I will go down to my friendly local Law firm and spend some! In the main, people arrive at the door of a law firm because they have an important (and often unpleasant) life change, or some other external pressure.
WORKING SMARTER
Going Mobile
So you have your office IT all set up but what about when you are out and about?
A-Z GLOSSARY SEE COMPLETE LIST
Election (doctrine of)
In Snell’s Equity 31st edition it says
“Election in equity arises where there is a duality of gifts or of purported gifts in the same instrument, one gift being of the donor’s own property to E, and the other being of E’s property to X. In such cases an intention is implied that the gift to E shall take effect only if E elects to permit the gift to X also to take effect”
This problem can therefore arise in Wills where a gift contained in it is in apparent conflict with the ownership of the asset in question.
