The team also participates very actively in the MSI global alliance of lawyers and accountants, where we are asked to assist in multi- jurisdictional trust work and to optimise tax mitigation for a mixture of individual clients and trust companies.
Private individuals
Breach of trust
The contentious probate group were instructed by four residuary beneficiaries under a will. The executor had sold a property which formed part of the estate to his daughter and son-in-law for half price, bypassing those who were entitled to inherit it. He also pocketed the proceeds and paid himself £20,000 for travel expenses and for items he claimed to have bought for the deceased (despite the fact that the receipts were dated after the date of death!).
At trial the court ordered that the property be sold. The clients will receive the sale proceeds. The executor and his children were held personally liable for the losses to the estate and will have to repay these together with the clients' costs.
The clients are extremely pleased and have also called Vicky Jones to express their thanks to the whole Group for their help and support throughout.
Inheritance claim
Vicky Jones settled an Inheritance Act claim where our client stood to lose her legacy under a will due to a claim by the deceased's daughter. The client decided to pay a large sum of money to the daughter, but after being advised to defend the claim did not do so. As a result, she will now recover £350,000 from the estate.
Charities
Tax savings made on £1m charitable trusts
A deceased client of the Tax, Trusts and Wills team left £1million on charitable trusts. She wanted this generous gift to recognise the close ties between her late husband and a university in The Netherlands. However, the Capital Taxes Office would have taken £400,000 for the Treasury, since gifts to foreign charities are not exempt from UK inheritance tax.
Barry Glazier and David Parkhouse, as the executors, were able to make use of an alliance between an English university and the Dutch university, so that the Dutch university received its £600,000 and the English university collected £400,000. Both universities are collaborating in a £1M charitable fund for food and agricultural research, specifically to achieve greater accessibility to water and food, for poor communities in the third world.
Barry recently received a letter from the Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research) at the English university:
"I am writing on behalf of the Division of Life and Environmental Sciences to thank you for all your efforts in bringing about a satisfactory outcome. We are most grateful to you for your help and advice."
Praise for Contentious Probate Group
The contentious probate group receives an increasing number of instructions from charities.
In one three months period they received nine sets of instructions from one charity in particular, and have so far recovered over £450,000 for this client.
In one of the most recent matters we were able to recover a substantial sum within a week, when the solicitors dealing with the estate had effectively ignored our client.
Geoff Thomas has received a very appreciative letter from the Charity’s Deputy Head of Legacies, which says:
“We are delighted to be able to tell you that we have now received the final distribution and all relevant paperwork to close this file. Thank you so much for all your hard work on our behalf. A distribution of this size has an enormous impact on our charity. As you know, we have been waiting for it for some time and without your involvement, we would most definitely still be waiting! We are enormously grateful for your patience and prompt responses in your dealings with us in this case.”
Business clients
The contentious probate group acted for a company who were owed almost £100,000 from an estate. One of the executors declared the estate bankrupt leaving no clear way to recover the money. Vicky Jones discovered that this executor had actually paid large sums of money to himself and others and that there had been sufficient money in the estate to repay the client. She obtained judgement for the full amount owed plus costs against the executor personally.
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