STEP Sussex summer special. 14 June 2022

The Summer Special is back!

We're back in person at the Amex Stadium with three fabulous speakers:

Professor Lesley King, Matthew Cameron and John Bunker will share their expertise with us.

Firstly, let’s talk about networking opportunities. Sadly, catching up face-to-face with professional colleagues is something we have all become unaccustomed to recently. So, we want to change all that and put some fun back into CPD and, to help break the ice, we’ll have:

• sandwiches on arrival;
• teas/coffee and pastries in the mid-afternoon break;
• networking drinks at the end – all courtesy of STEP Sussex

Private Client Update - Lesley King

This session will provide a review of current issues in private client practice. Lesley will focus on good practice and avoiding pitfalls. The content will depend to some extent on recent developments and is likely to include:

• the significance of the Goodrich decision when dealing with pre-2013 trusts
• recent decisions on errors when making wills and the lessons to be learned;
• recent decisions on errors in relations to trusts and the lessons that can be learned.

After completing the session delegates will be:

• aware of recent developments in the private client area;
• able to amend office practices appropriately.

Professor Lesley King is a former member of the Probate and Estates Committee of STEP, a former member of the Law Society’s Wills and Equity Committee and an honorary member of the Association of Contentious Trust and Probate Specialists. She is Professional Development Consultant at the University of Law.

She is co-author of Wills, Taxation and Administration: A Practical Guide; A Modern Approach to Wills, Administration and Estate Planning (with Precedents); A Modern Approach to Lifetime Tax Planning for Private Clients (with Precedents); A Practitioner’s Guide to Wills; Varying the Disposition of an Estate after Death; Wills: A Practical Guide; and editor of The Probate Practitioner’s Handbook.

She is a contributor to the Wills and Trusts volumes of Halsbury’s Laws and the Encyclopaedia of Forms and Precedents and to The Law and Ethics of Dementia.

She is the wills and probate columnist for the Law Society Gazette, and writes and lectures extensively on wills, taxation and related matters.

French Inheritance Law and Tax - Matthew Cameron

Matthew will discuss French inheritance law and tax matters, particularly looking at:

• how to structure the purchase of a French property;
• reserved heirship rules, how these are affected by the EU Succession Regulation, and how this Regulation is affected by Law 2021-1109 of 24 August 2021;
• issues arising in relation to gifting a French property;
• whether separate wills or one will may be preferable where there is a French property (please note – this is not going to be a straightforward answer!)

Matthew qualified as a solicitor in 1999 and has been practising French private client law since 2020. He heads the French Legal Services team at Heslop & Platt, part of Ashtons Legal. Matthew and all the solicitors and paralegal staff in the department are all fully bilingual in French and English. The team specialise in assisting private clients and their professional advisers in Franco-British cross-border inheritance planning, succession advice, will writing and property transactions. He is an Affiliate member of STEP.

TRS: Taking stock as the 1 September 2022 deadline looms - John Bunker

The latest on Trust Register practice for express trusts and joint ownerships, what must still be registered and the latest HMRC guidance.

With time to register existing express trusts running down, the scope of TRS still presents issues, and can seem random or unfair. This presentation aims to get to grips with the key priorities before 1 Sept and beyond, and the latest updates of HMRC’s TRS Manual. We will seek clarity, whether your firm registers trusts, or you need to help guide clients what to do. There are BD openings as well as confusing AML compliance in these difficult 5MLD provisions.

Any significant developments before 14 June will be addressed, but we hope to cover:

• the limits of the exclusions from the need to register, including the new bare trusts exclusion;
• Co-ownership of property and the interaction with estates: the further clarity due, even after the TRSM updates of 24/25 Feb;
• life policy trusts: how the new guidance on what needs to be registered works;
• mental capacity: how this sensitive issue is working;
• practice issues: what to do with old matters, cases where no funds or trustees won’t pay?

John Bunker serves on the TRS sub-group, advising HMRC on the guidance in their new TRS Manual, which he has contributed extensively to try to improve! He is also on HMRC’s Capital Taxes Liaison Group, was until Sept 2021 Chair of the CIOT Private Client (UK) Committee and represented STEP on the HMCTS Probate Users Group until November 2021. He is both a freelance lecturer and a consultant Solicitor and Chartered Tax Adviser with Irwin Mitchell and co-edited (and wrote one third of) the Law Society IHT Planning handbook (Dec 2020), with 14 colleagues from IM.