Watching out for the next generation

The time will come when you may need to think about planning your estate. This is an important exercise which will be of benefit to those whom you leave behind: there are many sad tales of cases where dependants and successors have been faced with dealing with a disorganised estate, in addition to dealing with their grief at a unwanted and unexpected loss.

Step 1 is to make your Will. This is not because you are going to die, although of course you are. It is more, in case you die before you were supposed to. Until you have properly defined the ultimate destination of all of the assets forming your estate, you cannot start to plan how you might organise the disposal of some of them in the meantime.

Obviously, the right time to make your Will is long before you are likely to need it, and that is one reason that some people never manage to do it. Also, the chances are that you will need to make a fresh Will every so often, as circumstances and fortunes change.

Nicholas Ridge CTA can advise about the sort of things you might want to put in your Will, and will happily work in conjunction with your solicitor.

There is a natural desire to help the next generation on its way through life, and perhaps you are in the fortunate position of having surplus assets, that is to say money or other assets that you are in practice never likely to have a need to draw on to support your current or expected lifestyles. Nicholas Ridge CTA can advise how you can best divest them, in favour of family members, or other beneficiaries, and what tax reliefs are available. In these cases, Family Trusts will sometimes be in point. Despite public commentary that trusts are virtually by definition there to avoid Inheritance and other taxes, they in fact serve a valuable purpose where, for example, the desire on the part of the settlor is to benefit a range of people, without knowing exactly which ones will require, or merit, most or least support from however much is available in the trust fund.

Inheritance Tax issues are relevant: more important though is the financial security of the parties involved. You do not want to be dependant to an unsafe degree upon the goodwill of others, to whom you have given away perhaps too much of your Estate, in the belief that saving IHT was the sole, or main consideration.

Please ask Nicholas Ridge CTA if you would like more information about the services the Firm can offer.

Nicholas Ridge operates as a Chartered Accountant and Chartered Tax Adviser under his own name, Nicholas Ridge CTA, in the Meon Valley in Hampshire.

For many years, Nicholas and Elizabeth Ridge Chartered Accountants and Chartered Tax Advisers ran a successful high street practice in West London. Their client base included individuals and businesses, and specialisms involved personal and business tax; not-for profit businesses; artists and professionals; and business start-ups

Their partnership merged with PK Group in 2013, at which point they moved to Hampshire