After an initial telephone consultation with the clients to discuss their situation and objectives, I emailed them a summary of my understanding of their current situation, my recommendations to put in place what they needed and the corresponding pricing to do it for them. The clients were based in the Midlands, so our ‘meetings’ were conducted via Zoom, after I had sent them a list of ‘things to consider and prepare’ for our first meeting.

The clients were married, with three adult children. They owned 50% of two very successful family businesses, with the husband’s brother and his wife owning the other 50%. None of the four owners were actively involved in running the business (having retired); it was run by one of the client’s children. The client wished to gift some shares to their child running the businesses now, rather than waiting until death.

Another of their children currently worked in the business at a junior level and the third had no interest in it. The clients did, however, want them both to benefit from shares on each death.

The four owners also shared ownership of the commercial properties the businesses were run from, and my clients wished to transfer their share of the properties equally to their three children as soon as possible.

In addition, the clients had a property portfolio of 17 residential properties. They provided me with a spreadsheet from their conveyancing solicitor detailing the properties, with supposed Title numbers and ownership status – which I offered to check. Their net personal assets ran into many £millions, excluding the value of the businesses (which should pass free of inheritance tax). They had no Wills, Lasting Powers of Attorney (LPAs) or Shareholder Agreements in place.

The solutions I put in place for the clients to meet their immediate objectives and ensure their estate planning provisions were fit for purpose, included:

• Introducing them by joint Zoom consultation to both Commercial and Trust Solicitors to start the process of putting Shareholder Agreements in place for the two businesses; including powers for an Attorney under an LPA to make decisions for an incapacitated shareholder and replacing standard pre-emption rights with a ‘cross-option’ to secure the available business relief from IHT (inheritance tax) on each death.
• I recommended they set up a Business Trust now. This would protect the company’s interest by leaving the business shares into Trust for the children who do not have managerial status in the companies. This enables them to benefit from income from the businesses, but without having voting rights or putting the companies at risk if they wanted to sell their shares or got divorced.
• Referring them to a Property Solicitor to get the ball rolling with the transfer of their shares in the commercial properties to their children.
• Drafting and registering a pair of LPAs for each of them – both ‘property and finance’ (to include both business and personal assets) and ‘health and welfare’.
• Drafting robust Wills to include Trusts for both IHT reduction (as they will never qualify for the Residence Nil Rate Band), and for asset preservation purposes (so their assets end up with their children, not unintended third parties).
• Drafting robust Expression of Wishes Letters to explain everything that has been done in plain English not legal jargon, so their Executors and Trustees know exactly what needs to be done on each death.

And finally, I checked and updated their conveyancing solicitor’s spreadsheet of their 17 investment properties (having downloaded all 17 Titles from the Land Registry) to ascertain whether the properties would pass under their Wills into Trust on 1^st death as they intended.

The original spreadsheet I had been given was abysmally inaccurate.

• 4 properties had the wrong Title number listed
• 6 were listed as ‘tenants in common’ (TiC) but were actually ‘joint tenants’ along with 5 others, so these 11 would not pass under their Wills into Trust for asset preservation purposes as they had intended
• 4 of the properties were held in the husband’s sole name, which he wished to be transferred into both client’s names as TiC.

After the Land Registry project was completed, I had completed 11 Title severances to TiC, along with four transfers of solely owned properties into both names as TiC, and updated their spreadsheet with all the correct information.

This was an extremely important project for clients who were in a very precarious situation if anything should have happened to either of them. Despite having used the relevant professionals to set things up for them in the past, they had been severely let down by those professionals doing a pretty shoddy job!

Fortunately, they were introduced to me!!