Trusts and Estates

This brief is being issued to let life insurers, trustees, advisers and policyholders know about a change to the treatment of chargeable event gains arising on life insurance policies held on bare trusts for minors. Background Under generally..

The purpose of a will is to make clear the intentions of the testator, to say which beneficiary is to get which item of property. Inevitably, the terms of the will are going to have to be put into effect at a time when the testator himself is not..

This issue of Trustees & Estates is appearing somewhat late in the month, owing to the Chancellor’s lack of respect for editorial deadlines when fixing the date of his pre-Budget report. In fact, there was almost nothing, on the face of..

Since March 2006, when almost every gift into trust became an immediately chargeable transfer for IHT purposes, it has been quite hard to identify circumstances where a client might be persuaded to make a settlement. There is no doubt that the..

For many income tax and capital gains tax purposes, the letting of furnished holiday accommodation can be treated as a trade provided a number of conditions are satisfied. Thus losses from the commercial letting of furnished holiday accommodation..

Q. I am executor of an estate which contains a number of shareholdings in quoted companies most of which are worth less than the values at the date of death, included in the IHT account. There seems no doubt that if the shares were sold now, there would be a claim for relief under Chapter III of Part VI IHT Act 1984 and a significant amount of IHT would be saved by substituting the sale proceeds for the IHT account values of the shares disposed of. However, the beneficiaries consider that the companies are good quality companies and would prefer to remain invested instead of selling. We are all considering the possible adverse effects of s180 IHT Act 1984 when reinvesting within two months of the last loss-making sale, but are anxious not to remain out of a market which is prone to make dramatic moves, both up and down.