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Tag: wills

COVID-19 AJK PUBLIC NOTICE

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I would like to thank the following people for enabling AJK to adapt to working from home:

Matthew Tweed along with Heather McGlone are still working tirelessly to enable AJK to offer our services seamlessly online and soon we will have this in place, from daily webcam meetings to accepting instructions from clients to offering our drafted work either by way of email / portal and for those without access to modern technology AJK will offer an exclusive and safe remote attestation service , ensuring our most vulnerable clients can sign documents from the comfort of their homes.

Mark Walker from Walker Telecom has installed new lines into the AJK household to enable Adrian to run and manage the business from home.

Dave from  www.commercebusinesssystems.co.uk for ensuring the beast of a printer is all set up and running in the AJK home / Office

All the AJK staff for remaining positive and simply getting on with business, AJK could not operate without you.

 

Thank You

 

Adrian Knight, Founder 

COVID-19

COVID-19 AJK PUBLIC NOTICE – Lasting Powers of Attorney & Wills

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As COVID-19 continues to spread throughout the UK, we’re doing all we can to protect the health and wellbeing of our staff. We also want to ensure we’re well prepared to continue to provide a good service to customers.

Social distancing

We’re quickly becoming more aware of how the virus spreads and implementing changes to our ways of working to limit contact between our employees and customers.As well as introducing home working rotas for our employees who are able to fulfil their roles remotely, our Estate Planners will soon be pausing face-to-face meetings and providing you with the same level of support by telephone, Skype or other web-based solutions. We believe this is the right thing to do to limit the spread of COVID-19 within the community.

Preparing for further disruption

As restrictions on movement and businesses become increasingly likely, we may face challenges to maintaining our service at its current level.  

While we’re actively working to mitigate any potential disruption for you, we’re asking you to take action now to make sure you can access the information you need if, for example, we’re unable to operate from our head office for a period of time.

Lasting Powers of Attorney and Wills, will be completed remotely, Adrian is currently looking at ways these documents can be signed to make them legally binding. If you are considering either of these documents then I would advise you arrange them without delay.

Meeting our customer needs

We’ve already seen early signs that more customers are looking to our services and it’s important we support you to meet those needs.

 

Given the potential for delay to paper application forms if we see disruption to the postal service or we’re unable to access to our head office for any period in the coming weeks, we recommend you use paperless applications if you’re set up to do so.

 

Staying in touch

We have sent our offer to help to our most vulnerable clients, we will be offering 3 days a week telephone calls, help with shopping and prescriptions.

As a situation that’s evolving rapidly, we’re committed to keeping you informed of further developments and any changes that may impact customers and your business.  

Property Trust, get a FREE health check with my team of experts

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1. Only naming a single beneficiary.

A key element of a discretionary trust is that there must be multiple potential beneficiaries who can benefit from it. The trustees’ discretion is over not just how to manage the capital and income of the trust fund, and when to make distributions, but who those distributions should be made to.
If there is a single beneficiary and no potential for new beneficiaries to be added to the trust then what you have is not truly a discretionary trust at all. For tax purposes it would be treated as either a bare trust or an interest in possession, depending on the default clause.

2. Having a very limited pool of beneficiaries
Only naming a couple of individuals can work fine initially. The trust could then be faced with the same issues as described in point 1.

3. Misunderstanding the point of a default clause

A discretionary trust can last for up to 125 years. This is the maximum perpetuity period allowed by law according to the Perpetuities and Accumulations Act 2009. The reason English trusts have a maximum perpetuity period at all is because there is a general legal principal that a person cannot tie up their assets in trust indefinitely. At some point the assets have to actually vest in someone. This is known as the ‘rule against perpetuities’, and sometimes ‘the rule against remoteness of vesting’.
What this means for discretionary trusts is that there needs to be a default beneficiary, and this needs to be a person who can take any assets in the trust fund at the point the trust ends. The circumstances in which a discretionary trust will end with assets still in it would be:
a) All of the potential beneficiaries have died.
b) The trust has reached the end of its 125-year perpetuity period.
Without a valid default clause any remaining funds result back to the testator’s estate, so in a worst scenario where the discretionary trust was a trust of residue the resulting fund would pass on intestacy.

IF YOU WOULD LIKE MY TEAM OF EXPERTS TO CHECK YOUR TRUSTS FOR FREE THEN CALL 01909 281277

What about my grandchildren?

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Order of entitlement Intestacy – Should you die without a Will

Leaves a spouse and no children then the surviving spouse takes the whole of the estate (NET estate)

Leaves a spouse and issue (child) spouse entitled to all personal chattels (tangible, movable property) there will be a statutory legacy of £250,000.00 plus ½ of the residuary estate and then any issue takes equally the other half of the residuary estate.

Parents (no surviving spouse or issue) then parents will receive equal shares in the estate.

Brothers and sisters of the whole blood (share both parents) shared equally between them

Stepbrothers and stepsisters (who share 1 parent)

Grandparents

Uncles and aunts of whole blood (mothers or fathers’ real brother or sister)

Step uncle and aunts

Finally, The Crown or Dutchee of Lancaster of Cornwall

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