The full site is being rebuilt and pages are being added over the coming weeks. The practice is contactable as usual.
What is actually at stake
Estate planning is not paperwork. It decides who inherits, who decides for you if you cannot, and how much of what you built survives the process.
If you do nothing
- The intestacy rules decide who inherits, and they will not match what you would have chosen
- An unmarried partner receives nothing, however long you were together
- Your home may be assessed in full towards care fees
- Nobody has authority to act for you if you lose capacity, and your family applies to the Court of Protection to get it
- Administration takes longer, costs more, and falls to whoever is least able to refuse
If it is planned properly
- Your estate passes to the people you chose, in the way you chose
- Assets can be held so they stay in the bloodline after a remarriage or a divorce
- The people you trust can act for you immediately if you lose capacity
- Your executors know what exists and where it is
- The tax position is understood in advance rather than discovered afterwards
What we cover
Six subjects. Each has a page setting out what it means, when it matters and what it typically costs.
Straightforward wills, and wills with trust provisions where the estate or the family situation calls for them.
Lifetime and asset protection trusts, trusts for vulnerable beneficiaries, and ongoing support for trustees.
What a local authority can and cannot take into account, and what can properly be done in advance.
Working out whether your estate is exposed, and what reliefs and allowances apply to it.
Drafted and registered, for both property and finances and health and welfare.
Advisory support and estate administration for executors who would rather not do it alone.
Who you are dealing with
The person you speak to first is the person who drafts your documents and the person who answers the phone two years later.
- Richard Ansah TEP
- Full member of the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners, the international professional body for practitioners in trusts, estates and inheritance tax.
- Society of Will Writers
- Member.
- An independent practice
- Not a firm of solicitors. Where a matter requires a reserved legal activity, it is handled by an appropriately authorised professional.
Questions people actually ask
Including the ones the profession tends to avoid answering in public.
What does it cost?
Guide prices are published rather than held back until an enquiry. Almost nobody in this sector does that, and the reason to do it is simple: you should be able to work out roughly what something costs before you speak to anyone.
They are a guide and not a quotation. Guide prices will be published on this site as it is rebuilt.
Will a trust really protect my home from care fees?
Sometimes, and not in the way it is often sold. A local authority can look behind a transfer and treat the asset as though you still owned it if it decides you disposed of it to avoid paying for care. There is no time limit on that assessment.
What matters is the reason for the transfer and the circumstances at the time it was made. Planning done years in advance, for reasons that stand up on their own, is in a very different position to planning done when care is already in prospect. Anyone who promises a guaranteed result is overstating it.
Why are you cheaper than a solicitor?
Lower overheads, and a narrower range of work. This is a specialist estate planning practice rather than a firm carrying departments across several disciplines.
The trade-off is real. A firm of solicitors carries a wider regulatory framework and can conduct reserved legal activities that this practice cannot. Where your matter needs that, you should use one — and I will say so.
Why are you more expensive than the will-writer down the road?
A basic will from a volume provider is a form. That is sometimes all that is needed, and if it is, you should buy the cheap one.
Where it stops being enough is where the situation is not standard: a second marriage, a child who needs protecting from their own circumstances, a business, an estate large enough to be taxed, a beneficiary who cannot manage money. Those need drafting rather than filling in, and they need someone who will still be reachable when the document is used.
What happens if I do nothing?
The intestacy rules apply. They are a fixed order of who inherits, set by statute, and they take no account of what you would have wanted. An unmarried partner is not on the list. Stepchildren are not on the list.
If you lose capacity without a lasting power of attorney, nobody automatically has authority to deal with your money or your care. Your family applies to the Court of Protection, which takes months and costs considerably more than the power of attorney would have.
Can I just write my own will?
Legally, yes. Most of the problems I see in probate come from wills that were valid but unclear, or valid and clear but did not do what the person assumed it did.
A home-made will is a reasonable risk on a simple estate going to one or two obvious people. It is a poor risk on anything else, because the mistake is discovered at the point where nobody can ask you what you meant.
Get in touch
Existing clients and general enquiries both welcome. Email reaches me fastest.
London E20 1BD