The Solicitors Regulation Authority has reneged on its original proposal to require solicitor firms to make details of complaints made against them available to the public. The business world has increasingly recognised the power of providing customer feedback data as a means of showing future purchasers the quality of service and products they themselves might…

The Chancellor, Phillip Hammond, has just announced his intentions to overhaul and simplify inheritance tax and the respective reliefs. Anyone who has taken an interest in inheritance tax would be well aware of the tortured history of this relief. There are something like 12 more commonly known reliefs available. All of these can impact on…

Mutual Wills can wreak havoc on a family! Surprisingly there are different types of Will which can be written for you. The simplest is a single Will – as it suggests this is a Will for you and you alone, and details where you would want your worldly goods to go to should you die.…

It has recently been reported that Lasting Power of Attorney documents have increased in popularity by 30% between April and June this year, when compared to the same period last year. Lasting Powers of Attorney documents are extremely important – they allow someone to appoint trusted members of the family or friends to manage their…

New figures released by the Government show that inheritance tax payments netted just under £5 billion for the 2016 / 17 tax year. This was the highest figure ever recorded for inheritance tax, and 4% up on the previous financial year. The rise has been attributed partly to the old perennial of high property prices,…

Registration fees charged by the Office of the Public Guardian have been found to be excessive. Government departments can only charge fees to cover what are known as operating costs. In other words, they cannot make a profit or a surplus. However, over recent years, the OPG has introduced a number of efficiencies into how…