Immediate steps following death

For helpful checklists dealing with the administration of estates, see Checklists: Estate administration—file checklist and Estate assets, liabilities and personal details—checklist.

For a precedent guide to give to clients explaining the immediate steps following a death, see Precedent: Immediate steps following a death—client guide.

Initial client meeting

The Solicitors Regulation Authority's (SRA) Standards and Regulations came into force on 25 November 2019.

The SRA Standards and Regulations set out the fundamental ethical and professional standards expected of all firms.

The SRA Standards and Regulations is available on the SRA's website.

Additionally the Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017, SI 2017/692 require the practitioner to conduct preliminary checks on prospective new clients. These can be broken down as follows:

  1. conflicts of interest

  2. anti-money laundering

  3. client vulnerabilities

  4. credit checks

For further guidance, see:

  1. Practice Notes:

    1. Preparing for initial client meeting with personal representatives, and

    2. Preliminary checks on prospective new clients

  2. Precedents:

    1. Authority for firm to deal with creditors

    2. Beneficiary ID form, and

    3. Monthly Independent Review Form

To view the latest version of this document and thousands of others like it, sign-in with LexisNexis or register for a free trial.

Powered by Lexis+®
Latest Private Client News

All in? Court confirms when a settlement is 'made' for the purposes of excluded property (Accuro Trust (Switzerland) SA v The Commissioners for HMRC)

Private Client analysis: This case considered the meaning of 'relevant property' under the settlements regime of the Inheritance Tax Act 1984 (IHTA 1984) and, in particular, the time at which this definition is to be tested. The question arose as to whether the trustees of an offshore trust established by a non-UK domiciled settlor were subject to the UK settlements regime in respect of property added to the trust after the settlor became deemed domiciled in the UK, or whether they were exempt from such charges as the trust consisted solely of excluded property. The First-tier Tribunal (FTT) held that whether trust property is excluded property is based on the status of the trust at the time that it was established, not at the time that the property in question was added to the settlement. As a result, the trust in this case did consist solely of excluded property and no inheritance tax (IHT) charges arose as a result of either the ten-year anniversary or capital distributions. The FTT was also asked to consider whether their jurisdiction was appellate, or supervisory only. The FTT held that, while their jurisdiction was supervisory, the questions raised by the trustees were relevant in establishing whether HMRC had acted reasonably and that the outcome (ie that the paid IHT should be refunded and that no further IHT was due) would be the same in either case. Written by Katherine Willmott, senior associate solicitor at Foot Anstey LLP.

View Private Client by content type :

Popular documents