Helping Families Secure Their Future: An Agenda for Policymakers

• Protecting the vulnerable
• Modernising our inheritance laws
• Building financial security
• Building a better tax system

STEP members work with families helping them to draw up long term plans for their savings and property and also helping them to protect the interests of vulnerable family members. The issues our members are asked to advise on are a good reflection of the issues that are of real concern to ordinary people. Increasingly, however, our members report that the tax, legal and institutional framework they work with has not adapted to the rapid changes in society over recent years.

The past generation has seen rapidly rising prosperity alongside a major expansion in home ownership. Household net wealth per head now averages over GBP100,000. Already more than 175,000 estates over GBP100,000 go to probate each year and STEP expects this figure to grow strongly as the boom in home ownership over recent decades works its way through. Given these figures, families increasingly recognise the need to think carefully about how they want the assets they have accumulated over their lives to be used.

Alongside the rise in prosperity, social trends increasingly require families and advisors to make sure that family assets are used to the best effect. A range of issues, such as rising divorce rates, improved longevity, increased geographic mobility within families and the shift to caring for vulnerable adults in the community all have major implications for how families need to arrange their affairs if they are going to help support relatives. Unfortunately too often the so-called ‘sandwich generation’, struggling to simultaneously care for children and elderly parents while holding down full time jobs, find themselves working ‘against the grain’ of rules and regulations that were drawn up before such issues became commonplace and with differing priorities in mind.

This pamphlet therefore looks at a range of issues that have been raised by STEP members from their professional practice. Most of our recommendations to tackle these issues would involve minimal or no net cost to the tax system. Quite often all that is required is sensitivity to the needs and concerns of older citizens, alongside greater awareness from officialdom of what, for example, powers of attorney are used for. In other areas, such as those where significant changes to primary legislation may be required, STEP would welcome the opportunity to work with all interested parties to refine the recommendations we have put forward.

Download the report (pdf, 649kb)