Ramondo;331700 wrote:That's left me with deciding which of Solicitor, Certified public accountant, Chartered accountant, Tax advisor or of course a financial advisor to use!
I wish wills, estates, tax were a bit simpler.
I personally would leave Solicitors and accountants (high street ones) to the absolute last.
Then tend to avoid or miss the elements associated with financial aspects rather stick with the drafting of contracts and paperwork or ensuring the square pegs go into the square holes.
A good wealth planner / IFA is more preferable IMO, but then ratified with the accountants and solicitors.
If you already have investments such as Bonds, Life policies, pensions etc an IFA can put the right trusts around them and build in succession plans around them at often nil or very low costs. Many providers offer standard trust policies to put around their offerings - you just need advice on the right one. What could cost £2k for a trust to be put around an investment bond can be done with a cup of coffee with an IFA who prints the legally per-approved L&G/Aviva/SW, etc trust template be it discretionary, loan, gift, bypass etc. Furthermore the trust document does not have to be from the same provider - I have an Aviva document around and Aegon Policy and it is perfectly valid.
Talk about a pension to a solicitor and they will tell you to talk to an accountant and talk to an accountant about putting a life policy or pension in a bypass trust and they will tell you to find a solicitor. This can also be true should you merely want to put a simple beneficiary on your plan (ie Expression of wishes).
However if you have a good IFA and they can manage the whole lot. If you already have a good IFA/wealth manager they should be able to present all the options available and then you can go to a solicitor to ratify things.
The issue is that if you do not have an IFA or wealth manager then many may not want to take it on. In the same way a solicitor may want to put themselves as the trustees of a trust, or the executor of a will for future revenue, an IFA is likely to want to find ways for long term revenues (if however you are their client they are already receiving the revenue and can often do the IHT paperwork elements for low costs whereas the solicitor wants low cost now but tie in the higher cost later on)
I have a neighbour whose father passed away and their solicitor wanted to charge £300+VAT per hour (which is reasonable) to close the estate down and explained that it could take between 40-50 hours based on the information they had and their fees are an average of 3% of the estate (bearing in mind the house is worth £1m alone). They frightened the son and mother with mumbo jumbo about trust law, filling in lengthy IHT forms, requesting land registry deeds etc. They explained that being long term clients they would cap the fee at £30k+VAT if it went over.
Long story short agreed to help and negotiated a flat fee of £1k +VAT with same solicitor and used the spreadsheet their old IFA had sent them in the past (son fired the IFA when he got involved in fathers affairs to help him out and save on costs) to get valuations, trust documents and divert pension to mother (IFA had put all these in place and advised the solicitors not be put on executors, rather the sons and mother. However IFA did not want to take them back on as clients but given mother was a client was happy to generously provide information to her).
Apparently solicitors were going to encash all the father's holdings including ISA's and pool the monies together into their accounts and then distribute proceeds for ease and savings in time and costs.
It may be wise to start building up a relationship with a good IFA first for small things and build up, as you go along. If you approach them with IHT planning at the outset, then expect high fees at the outset. Nevertheless you can get a feel for options that include your specific plans (some solicitors use an IFA in the background re financial plans and then pass on the fees in their own charging),