Passing Wealth with Purpose: Estate Planning for Families and Business Owners

Estate planning is about far more than passing on wealth — it’s about protecting your family, preserving your legacy, and ensuring your wishes are carried out with clarity and certainty.

In this episode of the Purposeful Wealth Podcast, Jonathan Gibson is joined by Chris Gardiner of Thorntons Solicitors, a specialist in estate planning for UK families, entrepreneurs, and business owners.

Together, they explore the key pillars of effective estate planning, including how to reduce inheritance tax, why wills and powers of attorney are essential, and how families can successfully pass wealth to the next generation.

They also discuss the real-world challenges families face — from changes in UK tax rules to rising asset values and later-life care — and explain why early planning and open family communication are critical.

Whether you’ve already built significant wealth or are just starting to think about your legacy, this episode offers practical insights to help you take control of your future.

What we cover in this episode:

•  Why estate planning is about more than just tax — it’s about control, clarity, and protecting your family 
•  The risks of not having a will or power of attorney in place 
•  How inheritance tax works in the UK and why more families are being affected 
•  The impact of frozen tax thresholds and rising asset values 
•  How gifting and the “7-year rule” can reduce inheritance tax 
•  The role of trusts and family investment companies in long-term planning 
•  Why business owners need to think carefully about succession and tax exposure 
•  What happens if you lose mental capacity without a plan in place 
•  The realities of funding long-term care and common misconceptions 
•  How intestacy rules can create unintended outcomes for families 
•  When and why you should review your will 
•  The importance of family communication and preparing the next generation 
•  How tools like family charters and prenuptial agreements can help protect wealth 

Key Takeaways:

•  Estate planning should start with the basics: a will and a power of attorney
•  Planning early creates more opportunities to reduce tax and protect assets 
•  Without a plan, your estate is distributed according to outdated legal rules 
•  Open communication between generations is essential for successful wealth transfer 
•  Good planning provides peace of mind — not just financially, but emotionally for families 

Who this episode is for:

•  Business owners and entrepreneurs 
•  Families with growing or significant assets 
•  Anyone concerned about inheritance tax or passing wealth efficiently 
•  Individuals who haven’t yet created a will or power of attorney

Find all our useful links on our LinkTree - https://linktr.ee/jonathangibson

And why not visit us at: https://www.wellsgibson.uk/

And get a copy of the book, Purposeful Wealth here: https://amzn.eu/d/0i7wWgJy

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Hello and welcome to the Purposeful Wealth Podcast. Wells Gibson, we believe wealth planning is about much more than investment returns. It's about helping families live with clarity, contentment, and certainty and ensuring that everything they value is protected and passed on in the way that they intend. Many of the families that we work with have built up significant assets over their lifetime, often through running a running a business or investing sensibly and often just making good financial decisions. But with that wealth become important questions. How do you pass wealth to the next generation efficiently? How can you reduce inheritance tax? What happens if you lose capacity? And what action can be taken if long-term care becomes necessary? Well, to help us explore these important issues, I'm delighted to be joined today by Chris Gardner of Thornton's solicitors. Chris specializes in advising UK and international families on tax-efficient estate planning. Many of his clients are entrepreneurs and business owners, and he often works alongside financial planners, accountants, and family offices to help families structure their affairs sensibly. Chris is also an accredited member of the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners, otherwise known as STEP, and it's the leading global professional body for specialists in trust, trusts and estate planning. Chris, a very warm welcome to the Purpose for Wealth podcast. No, it's great to have you here. And um although I have to say, with this lovely weather outside, I think we should be playing golf, should we not? You know? Anyway, um I'm sure we'll I'm sure we'll manage to um I'm sure we'll manage to get around to golf um in the in the very near future. Um Chris, maybe maybe we could just start by um maybe just following on from what I've said, giving us an give us a little idea into the work that you're you're finding you're doing mostly at the moment. Is there anything specifically that seems to be a real focus for you and your work at the moment?

SPEAKER_00 2:49

So as we said, um my kind of area of specialism is estate planning. So we help individuals and families who you know have built up an asset base that's reasonably significant, or maybe they've inherited that um from the generation above. I would say most of my clients are probably business owners, so it's maybe first generation wealth, and they want to look at ways as to how do they structure that in a in an efficient way, not just from a tax efficiency point of view, but a way that it means it will grow over the generations and you know it'll trickle down um in their family throughout years. Um so there's a mix of elements involved in that. I mean, obviously, over the last couple of years, the the Labour government have made quite significant changes to inheritance tax. So, you know, for business owners in particular, business property relief has been quite a hot topic over the last um say 18 months to two years. So we've been working with a lot of families who uh who own shares in private family businesses and how do they maybe structure that to ensure that they don't have a significant tax exposure, um, which you know, not just for the sake of not paying tax, it's really for trying to minimize the impact it has on the business. I think sometimes in all the politics of these things get slightly lost that you know, family businesses are kind of the core of the Scottish economy. Um, I think more than 80% of businesses in Scotland are family-owned, um, at least to a certain extent. And so, you know, for the good of the country in terms of economic activity, you know, we need to try and ensure that these businesses continue and there's not kind of fire sales and when when big tax bills appear. So I would say of all the things I do, that's probably been um one of the the sharpest parts in terms of focus over the last couple of years.

SPEAKER_01 4:34

Yeah, okay, okay. Yeah, really, really interesting. As you say, the Labour government has certainly set the cat amongst the pigeons, particularly with regards to regards to the you know, pensions or um defined contribution pensions being included within one's estate. Um but from your perspective, Chris, what why is estate planning so important for families who who have accumulated wealth?

SPEAKER_00 5:02

Yeah, so there's probably two or three things. So at the end of the day, if you particularly if you're a first-generation family who's maybe owned a business and is trying to pass on that business to the next generation, or you've successfully exited and you have you know cash that's to be invested and structured in a way for the family long term, you know, it's likely that people have worked very, very hard to get themselves into that position. And if if they're not planning to look at the future and how that's structured for you know themselves and the next generation or two, you're basically leaving it open to the the legal framework that exists for that situation. And that's not necessarily what you would want. So, you know, for instance, you mentioned incapacity at the at the start. Um, so if someone has wealth and they've not done any planning and they're intending to do that at some point in the future, if they don't have a really robust power of eternity document in place, they don't have anyone appointed who can do that planning for them. So if they become incapacitated, what their family would have to do is go to a Sheriff Court of Scotland and apply for what's called a guardianship order. Now, guardianships are quite limited. You've got to stand and convince a sheriff that every single power you're requesting is absolutely necessary for this person. So, you know, what that does is it puts a burden onto your family to try and pick up the pieces, go through a court process, which is quite lengthy, um, quite expensive at times as well, and to try and get all the pieces to be able to get your planning in place because you've not put in the framework there to allow them to do that if you're unwell. So the difficulty with that is that there's a period of limbo there where no one can access your assets, no one can make decisions about your investments, about how your pension is structured, about you know whether you can transfer property, etc. So that's that's not ideal to put it quite bluntly. But also in terms of you know, if you were to unexpectedly die, you know, relatively young and you hadn't yet done some planning to structure who you know a will which stated who you would want to benefit, how you would want them to benefit, whether you're going to pass some assets to someone outright, or whether they'd be held in trusts or other structures. Um, if you've not done all of that, then basically in Scotland what happens is that the succession of few assets in your estate are governed by a set of rules from an Act of Parliament in 1964. Now, families do not look the same way they did in 1964, the whole idea of kind of the nuclear family, I wouldn't say it's gone, but it's it's not as common these days as it as it once was. And you know, people might be married a couple of times, might have children from different relationships. And so if you don't have a will in place that sets out quite clearly how you want people to benefit in your family, um, it will just be divided per a family tree. And the common misconception with that is that everything just goes to your spouse, and actually at a certain level of wealth, um, which is not that high a figure anymore, it it some of it goes to your children as well, and that can create you know inheritance tax liabilities and things straight away. So it's the whole kind of if you don't prepare for these situations, particularly with incapacity and death, you will just get what is in the statute book, which tends to never be what people envisage they would want um the family to have.

SPEAKER_01 8:31

Right, okay. And and what you know, what do you see, you know, with that in mind, what are the the biggest opportunities that that families have to reduce inheritance tax, assuming they plan early enough?

SPEAKER_00 8:48

Yeah, well, you know, despite the changes to to UK inheritance tax or the changes that are coming in both this April and next April, you you mentioned the pension changes. The the UK regime, if you do an international comparison, it's not too bad. It's actually relatively generous in a sense that you can undertake some planning and you'll be familiar, um, and lots of people listening will be familiar with the whole idea of the seven-year rule. So this is to do with making gifts. So you can you can make gifts out of your estate, and at a very basic level, what that means is if you survive those gifts by seven years, they don't come back into your estate for the purposes of inheritance tax. So a really simple example is if you gifted£100,000 in cash to one of your children, as long as you survive that gift by seven years, that's out of your estate. So there's there are no tax bill on that in the years to come. Um now there's a kind of framework around that where there are certain rules and how that will interact, but that generally, if you look at an international comparison, that's that's quite generous. And there was a bit of chat over the last couple of years as to whether the Labour government would get rid of that. Um you look at Ireland, for instance, Ireland have um have a tax system where you're allowed to give each child a certain amount of assets and then they start to pay a gift tax on what they inherit after that at a certain level. And that's not that's not uncommon in some other jurisdictions as well. So if you plan early enough, there actually are opportunities to divest yourselves of some assets, pass them down either outright to children or into other kind of vehicles that you can hold wealth in, so trusts, family investment companies, uh limited partnerships that are structured with family members in them. So you can you can put that planning in place if you do it early enough and you take professional advice as to the kind of legal and tax consequences of that.

SPEAKER_01 10:44

And do you do you you mentioned their family investment companies, but you would you typically see these for um you know whereby there are there's at least maybe a million pounds of assets that could be used?

SPEAKER_00 10:59

Yeah, so so essentially now you can only put about 325,000 pounds into a trust before there are kind of tax consequences of that on a very kind of simple level. Sometimes if you have some reliefs, there are things you can do. But for a family investment company, why they've become so attractive in recent years in particular is that you can actually put more assets into them than that if you structure it by way of an initial loan, maybe to fund the company, um, and then get assigned part of that loan over the years. So the the family investment companies, because of the rules around company governance annually at a company's house, we have to submit annual accounts, there's other bits and pieces you have to deal with. We would generally say that you'd have to have a reasonably substantial investment to go into a family investment company to make the cost of running it worthwhile. So um the kind of the smallest ones I've seen are around a million or two million pounds. Um but and and they're fine if the person who's creating it has the appetite to pay the annual costs associated with that. I would say they're more commonly seen where there's kind of four or five million plus of assets going into the company just because of what's involved in the annual administration. But they're a really effective vehicle in certain circumstances whereby particularly older generations can control how and when younger generations benefit from dividends being passed to them. So they're a kind of a good tool, and business owners in particular like them because if they've worked with company structures throughout their career when they've owned businesses, they understand the concept of a board of directors, they understand the concept of share classes and different rights and different rights to dividends. So that's something that business owners we tend to find quite like the idea of. If they do maybe have younger children or children who are young adults, and they want to maybe protect the assets from their outright ownership until they're maybe a little bit older.

SPEAKER_01 13:01

Yeah, yeah. And it's become it's becoming a it really is becoming a challenging issue, particularly with the the prospect of pensions, private pensions being included in one's estate. But you know, I you'll be able to tell me this, but how long is it since when was the last increase to the nil rate band? You know, 300 that's now 325,000?

SPEAKER_00 13:24

Yeah, I mean, before before my career, I think it was um I think it was maybe 2008 or 2010. I would need to look it up, but it's certainly it'll it'll be quite close to 20 years, maybe not quite that, but very, very close, I would think. And so, you know, I think we have to accept that fiscal drag is a policy of the government. It is.

SPEAKER_01 13:47

Yeah, absolutely. It is. I mean, I suppose it was welcome when they introduced the residence no rate band, but you know, they they give you something in one hand and then they say, but if your if your total state exceeds two million, we're gonna take the residence no rate band away from you. Um and and I I think that and the big challenge is there's a lot of people out there who probably wouldn't regard themselves as particularly wealthy, but they're gonna be caught by this because asset prices, you know, assets are rising in value over time, you know, whether it be house price inflation or investment performance on your on your ISIS, and all of a sudden there's going to be this um, you know, number, a huge number of people caught by the fact that the government governments have just not not increased the thresholds, increased the allowances. It's a real injury.

SPEAKER_00 14:40

I mean for funding of uh different projects that they want to implement and you know, house prices now in comparison to to what they were even 10, 15 years ago, you know there's been a significant rise even in outside the big cities. Um and you know, you even look at like capital gains tax allowances and things they've been cut in recent years, and you think about the allowance sizes and when these these this legislation was brought in for say capital gains in the in the 1980s. Um you know, without raising taxation, this this is how the government are trying to obviously raise some more money. And George Osborne was the the chancellor at the time when the residential mill rate band came in. I don't know how many chancellors I think that is now, quite a few. Um and they had the opportunity to just say, well, we'll increase the normal inheritance tax mil rate band, which is 325,000. We could just increase that to 500,000. But they opted instead for a more complicated way of doing things whereby they borrow it in the second nil rate that's particular to you know your main residence or your family home, and they said you it's 175,000, but you only get it if you have direct descendants who are inheriting the property, you you know, you die with an interest in that property, um, you're worth less than two million when you die. So I I think it was to try and appease probably voters in the south of England where house prices were were very, very high, so that was an issue at the time, but you know, it was a bit of political manoeuvring, but it's not quite done what it was set out to do.

SPEAKER_01 16:16

Yeah, yeah. And I one of the things you you'll be well aware of, um, I know we've talked in the past that um you know, aside from you know, the whole inheritance tax, which is obviously planning for you know, reducing one's liability to tax on death and ensuring that the that what you own is transferred to your loved ones in a um in a in an efficient manner at the right time. But on this subject, you know, given that people are generally we're told people are living longer, um you know, as people live longer, you know, many families are having to face decisions around later life care. So, you know, we've been talking about okay, what's a tax position and death? But from a you know, from a legal perspective, what planning can people put in place or should people put in place to make you know that stage of life easier for themselves and their families?

SPEAKER_00 17:20

Yeah, I mean again this is kind of local authority funding, so it's it's that's squeeze on that is meaning that councils are looking to to ensure that where people have um what they would term to deprive themselves of assets before they maybe need some kind of care facility. Um kind of looking at that in Scotland quite strictly. Now, obviously, there's a lot of noise about the issue getting the press, and a lot of that actually has to do with the English system, the Scottish system is slightly different. Um Yeah, I always say to people that the first thing is to kind of understand how you fund care. So in Scotland, if if you need to, you know, residential care or need care at home, um, you know, if you have the assets to fund that, if you have the income level to fund that, you are just a self-funding person. So um, you know, for a lot of people who are fortunate enough to have built a wealth, it it although it's so to kind of pay the level of fees that are associated with these things, people are in the position to do that. So if they have a substantial income, maybe from pension or or other um income sources, they they often just pay that from the income. And that there's no issue of them ever having to look at other assets because the local authority only are only looking at what assets you have if you're asking them to fund your care. And if you're funding your care yourself, they're not really interested in what assets you have. And I suppose what the difficulty comes at sometimes is if maybe there's been a couple, one of them's passed away, the survivor is left with with all of the combined assets, they then move into a care facility. And sometimes most uh care homes now will be looking for evidence that you can fund for maybe three or four years before they accept your application. It's only really if you can't do that that then the local authority are saying, well, if we're going to have to pick up the tab for paying for this, um we'd like to see that you've not divested yourselves of assets. And you know, unfortunately, if they deem that you have divested yourself of assets with a view to kind of depriving yourself of that capital to fund fees, you know, they can come after family members quite quite aggressively. You know, we probably won't go into today the legalities of how that all works necessarily. But you know, if people have structured assets years and years before into trusts and things, maybe for other reasons, there are ways that they can they can sometimes effectively be sheltered, but it depends on the kind of rationale when that's done. Um so there probably are opportunities, but they're quite limited, and it depends on the rationale of the time you're doing them and and how it's structured. But there is this kind of misconception that that as soon as you go into a care home, people you know, the local authorities are trying to sell your house, they don't they don't have any authority um to do that. Um they're interested in your income levels, and and only if you're asking them to fund um your care because you don't have the income levels do they really become interested in in what assets you have to perhaps fund that.

SPEAKER_01 20:19

And that and that becomes the you know, that becomes a challenge because it's all very well um, you know, trying, you know, not having enough assets so that the local authority takes care of your you know your your care, but but ultimately you would surely want to choose which care home you went to or what your you know you know I wouldn't want to be in a situation situation where my my dear mum ended up in a care home in the future that that was you know not the standard I would expect.

SPEAKER_00 20:52

You know, so you can see the case where we attract people who you know, a lot of people ask these things who have you know fortunate that you know we work with clients who've who've been quite successful usually and have substantial assets. And you know, I usually say to them, Look, with your income levels and asset levels, you're this is not something you're gonna have to worry about. And actually, as you say, you should be thinking about um, you know, I want the best care possible for myself or my mother or father or whatever. That's that's more of an issue, I think, that um, you know, I've heard of families before who've you know gone to great extents to divest themselves of lots and lots of assets, um, and then you know, they realised actually the quality of care they're going to get in the local authority funded nursing home is is not what they want for their parents, and they end up simply then footing the bill for it because they won't see their parents you know set in a quite grubby kind of care home somewhere.

SPEAKER_01 21:45

Yeah, sure. And and on the subject of you know, on coming back to the whole point of estate planning, um Chris, perhaps just for the for anyone watching and listening to this, you Could explain why why wills and powers of attorney are such a critical part of good estate planning? And I only ask this because I'm amazed how many um adults I hear of adults in the UK who still don't have wills and haven't arranged powers of attorney.

SPEAKER_00 22:16

Yeah, I mean the the stats are supposed quite alarming. Um but I suppose I have a kind of unique view on that because I see how how difficult it can be at the other end. Um so I think uh recent stats I've seen is that it's less than one in you know less than 50% of people uh would have a will and powerful turn rate. I mean in Scotland obviously we have different rules than than in England and Wales, and touched on it earlier that if you die without a will in Scotland, there are certain um levels of um different asset classes and the way your estate is divided. So your spouse is entitled to um a share of your property up to a certain value, they're entitled to cash up to a certain value, depending on whether you're survived by children. But then everything after that is basically divided between a spouse and children, and so you can end up with some pretty messy situations, and we we do we do see them where people have kind of wrongly assumed that their spouse will inherit everything or their children will inherit everything. Um, and depending on the family circumstances, that doesn't happen. And what it often does is if you have a married couple, um it sometimes means that there's an inheritance tax bill on the first death. So not only are they not inheriting all the assets, they're actually having to pay a tax bill as well because their children are having to pay some of them. Now there are ways to try and vary the estate to get around that, but essentially what it means is that it's a much, much more labour-intensive and quite frankly, expensive process than if you have a clear will in place that's been professionally drafted that says, you know, when I die, I want these people to be the executors who are in charge of winding up my estate. I want these people to benefit in this way. Um, and and and that's that's pretty robust. That is what will happen. So if you have a good will, you knock out all of what we call the rules of intestacy, which relate to the family tree and the rules from 1964 that I mentioned. The only thing on top of that that can disrupt that in Scotland is that we do have some uh what you call forced airship rules. So we have uh what are known as legal rights. So a spouse and children, if they're not included in your will, you do have certain rights to make claims over your movable estate. So, not the value of any kind of land and heritable property, but the value of cash, investments, you know, items you might have that are movable. Um, and so that's the only thing that can disrupt a will. Um so if there is maybe a family fallout and there's a child that someone doesn't speak to, they potentially do still have a claim on your estate in Scotland, even if you have a will. But actually, if you engage early when you're making that will with a lawyer, they will explain how legal rights work to you and what planning options you might have to mitigate that risk. Whereas if you just do nothing, you're going to get hit with the rules of intestine, which you know, I don't think I've ever seen an intestate state where the outcome is what the family had envisaged or wanted. Um, so if you plan early, you get all the benefits of that. And that's the same with the power of attorney. So I mentioned guardianship orders earlier. If you become incapacitated and you don't have a power of attorney in place, your family have to go through a court-based process to be appointed to officially manage your financial affairs and to make decisions about your welfare on your behalf, so about medical treatment and where you live and things like that. If you put a power of attorney in place in Scotland, you can put in place what you call a continuing and welfare power of attorney. Now, the continuing side deals with your finances, so it allows your attorneys who you've appointed, who might be your wife andor your children or your husband. It allows them to make decisions about your banking, about dealing with paying bills on your behalf, everyday admin tasks, buying, selling property. But more commonly these days as well, if you have one professionally drafted, you'd have powers in there around doing tax planning on your behalf, making gifts on your behalf, dealing with inheritances that you might have. And then on the welfare side, it would cover off where you live, what you eat, how you dress, who you socialise with, what medical treatment you receive. So if you have a power of fraternity in place where you're appointing your family members and you're saying in advance, I want these people to make these financial and welfare decisions for me if I become very unwell in the future and become incapacitated. That document can be registered and then used immediately by them if you're you know in a bad accident or become unwell very quickly. Whereas if you don't have that in place, they have to at that point go through that court process where it does leave your affairs in lumble. Um and it can have quite, you know, in terms of being able to manage investments and things, depending on how they're structured, it can have quite disastrous um consequences for people's finances.

SPEAKER_01 27:03

And and when it comes to wills, Chris, is it I mean, is there a is there best practice in terms of how frequently you know uh one person should review review their will?

SPEAKER_00 27:17

Yeah, there's probably not one size fits all. Um I would say generally we say to people every three to five years, or if there's a major life event. So um if you have children, if your children have children, you become a grandparent. If you're divorced, um, you know, if you're buying or selling a business, um if there are kind of significant life events, you should review your will to make sure it still is in line with your wishes. But we would say generally with three to five years, it's good to reach out to your lawyer and review it anyway, just because there might have been changes in legislation um in relation to how your will is structured. There might have been tax changes, for instance, the inheritance tax changes that have happened or on the horizon. Um and and so just keeping that under review means that you're getting the most up-to-date information about what is best for your circumstances. You know, it's not uncommon to see people making a will when they're maybe in their late 20s and they're buying a property, and then you don't see them review it until maybe their children are 20, 25, you know, 20, 25 years later. Um, usually that's okay, but you can miss opportunities if you don't keep it under review.

SPEAKER_01 28:26

Yeah, okay, thank you. Now that's very, very helpful because we do find that um you know regularly when we meet clients um and you find out that uh they arranged their wills when they were married, and since then there's been children and grandchildren, and they've never I don't even think they know where their will is. Um there's often another another uh challenge that we we seem to come across. And you know, from your experience because we said at the outset that you you have experience in advising you know the entrepreneurial family or families, sorry, um you know from your experience advising entrepreneurial families, what what in your opinion helps wealth pass successfully to the next generation?

SPEAKER_00 29:20

Between the generations, so you know, if if there is a good dialogue between um the generation that maybe has the if it's the first generation wealth or or the inherited wealth um and the generation below them, if if there's a you know a certain time when children are old enough and maybe are adults themselves, if there's a you know frank discussion about the purpose of that wealth, you know, coming to the title of your podcast and kind of you know what is the purpose of that for the family, um you know, the kind of the story about how it's been acquired. Um, if there's a kind of frank discussion and engagement about why it's structured in a certain way, so you know, there might be discussion about why there are shares in a family business and trust and they're not going to be passed on to you as the child outright. And maybe that's because of certain tax reasons, uh, certain tax benefits for family as a whole, it's maybe a protection element to protect those shares from being owned outright, so that if someone in the next generation was to maybe get divorced or to be involved in a separation, if they were habitating, then those shares have a bit more protection from being involved in any financial settlement. So I think like at a very fundamental level, at the right time and in a in a kind of structured way, um, if there's a healthy kind of engagement, that always sets the tone really well. Um, and I think also just being quite frank about the risks involved. So, you know, we we often help families kind of navigate that discussion between generations, um, where we're saying to clients, look, you're going to pass over this wealth to your son or daughter. Um, you know, we don't know how their relationship will be in the future. But my my advice to you as a legal professional is that you should ask them to enter into a prenuptial or a post-nuptial agreement with their spouse or some partner, because we want to make sure that these assets that they're going to inherit outright, if the nature of those assets change throughout our marriage, we don't want any argument if there is a breakdown in the marriage that this family wealth that's been acquired is part of the financial settlement. We want to make sure that that's separate because maybe if that is shares in a family company, we're then going to have to find liquidity to find the cash to deal with that financial settlement because the shares will be transferred. So they're quite difficult conversations between generations because quite often parents think they're then prying into the marriages or several partnerships of their children. So that's, I suppose, where you know having professional advisors comes in that we can we can structure a meeting and say, look, this isn't your your mother or father's idea, this is the advice we are giving them. This is the best thing for the protection of the family wealth. It's a matter for you as a family to discuss how you do that. But this is the best advice you're going to get. And here's what it is. Um you kind of sit in the room and you're the one that everyone can point at and blame, and that's your job in that situation. Um, so yeah, early engagement, you know, ongoing discussions, annual reviews. Sometimes, if a decision has been made and there's a certain level of wealth involved, we will maybe structure a document like a family charter. So family charter is just an agreement, if you like, between different generations of the family saying, you know, here's all these kind of fundamental principles that we're going to sign up to. We're going to sign up to as a family trying to be tax efficient, trying to protect the assets from divorce and other potential issues. And that's quite a good way of if you have had a discussion as a family and you have agreed certain things, you write it down and you all sign it. Not because that's necessarily a really enforceable document in a court, but it's a record of a decision. And if you go five, ten, fifteen years in the future, you know, recollect recollections may vary of what was agreed, but if it's written down, then you know you've got the basis to have a kind of civilised conversation about it.

SPEAKER_01 33:19

Yeah, yeah. That's very helpful. I really love that that idea of the of the the charter. I think that's a that's a great thing, isn't it? Just setting down why, you know, what's prompted a particular decision. Great. And you know, and you're absolutely right, you know, conversation is key, but just communicating um with the family, and as you as you've said, involving um other professionals. Um you know, have a meeting that involves your your your lawyer, your accountant, your financial planner is is going to be critical in all of this, isn't it? Critically for these entrepreneurial families. Um I suppose my I mean there's so much, there's so many questions. I think we could I think we could probably run a series of episodes on the subject, taking one thing at a time, you know, whether it be lifetime gifting or an episode on trusts or family investment companies and all the rest of it. Um but you know, hopefully, hopefully today is um or this episode is um will prompt um viewers or listeners to to at least at least get their will done, I guess, um or engage with engage with in some professional advice. I mean my final question, I suppose, is that if someone um is watching or listening to this episode and hasn't done any estate planning as yet, what's the one step they should take first, Chris?

SPEAKER_00 34:52

Yeah, uh I always describe estate planning to people as as kind of two lines. So there's a line up at the top, which is your estate plan, and that's if everything goes well and you live long enough to do all the lifetime planning you want to do to structure your assets in the way you want to do. But I always talk about the kind of the line below that being there to catch and and bring it back up if things don't go to plan. So I always say to people when we first meet, look, let's get a will and a power of eternity in place, let's get the basic fundamentals in place so that once we chat and create an estate plan and work on that over a number of years, if you become incapacitated and you can't finish that estate plan, your powers of attorney can do that under your power of attorney. If you unexpectedly pass away before you've got to the end of that estate plan and you've not managed to do the gifting or structure the estate planning right until the end, then in your will there's a soft landing, maybe if it's a first death between spouses or several partners, there's a soft landing from the urban stack purposes, so we can pick that back up and continue on the estate plan. So I think those basic fundamentals would be the will and the power of eternity, and then you have a more detailed discussion from there about well, what can you do before it gets to that point that you can start to structure a plan to slowly and in a controlled way reduce your wealth and pass that down to the next generation. But at the same time, making sure, and this is of course where where you come in, Joel, making sure that they they have enough to have a comfortable life, they have uh you know a nice income, they have a capital in the background to make sure that if they do want to do all the things they planned in retirement, there's money there. Um there's a balance between those two things.

SPEAKER_01 36:32

Yeah, that there is, and it's exactly it's exactly the role that we do play in um when it comes to estate planning, particularly around whether it's establishing a trust or um being able to answer those big questions that many clients have, you know, how much is enough, or how much could I afford to give to my children um without running out of money? You know, you know, they're the sort of big questions that uh that we love to help answer. Um Chris, look, as I said, there's so many things we could have we could talk about today, but I really just want to thank you so much for for joining me in um in today's episode. Um it's very much appreciated. Um and as we've said, estate planning is something many people put off, but as we've discussed today, good planning can make an enormous difference, not just financially, but also in terms of clarity and peace of mind for families. If there are any viewers or listeners that would like to learn more about Chris and the work that he does and the work that his team does at Thornton Solicitors, um, we'll include those details in in the show notes. And if you've enjoyed today's uh conversation, please subscribe to the Purpose for Well podcast where we hopefully explore the ideas and decisions that help families live with clarity, contentment, and uh certainty. Again, Chris, thank you so much for for joining us and I'm sure we will um at some point speak again to it.

SPEAKER_00 38:12

Thank you. Thanks for having me. Cheers.