Most advice you give has a legal document behind it, and the document is usually someone else's job. We draft the legal half of the plan, under our own engagement, and we stay out of the regulated half entirely.
For deaths on or after that date, unused pension funds and most death benefits count towards the estate for inheritance tax. Four categories are excluded by statute. Most wills and most nomination forms in your back book were completed on the opposite assumption.
Most of the things that matter to a client set off more than one decision at once. Someone dies, a marriage ends, a business sells, an owner gets ill, and the will, the pension, the mortgage, the shareholder agreement and the tax all have to line up. Each is often drafted at a different time by a different professional, so they need checking against each other.
What we are offering is coordination. You keep the client and the regulated advice; we draft the documents that sit underneath it; you are told what was done. Separate engagement letters, separate fees, separate complaints routes.
We are a law firm. We are not authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority, we do not advise on investments, pensions or protection products, and the engagement says so. There is nothing in your service line for us to sell into.
Nine things clients say in ordinary review meetings, and the question that opens each one up.
“I have not updated my will since…”
Has anything changed — family, property, pensions, the business?
“I have inherited some money”
What do you need it to do, and is your own will still right?
“My parents are getting older”
Do they have powers of attorney, and a plan for income, housing and care?
“I am thinking about retiring”
What income will you need, and are the legal documents current?
“We are separating”
Would it help to see housing, pensions and cashflow alongside the legal side?
“We never did a shareholder agreement”
What should happen to control and value if an owner dies?
“The business depends on me”
What happens to cashflow, decisions and your family if you are not there?
“I want to sell in a few years”
What does the sale need to fund, and what value does that need?
“A buyer has approached me”
Before you answer them, do you know your options and your likely net outcome?
You own the regulated half of every one of them.
Wills and lasting powers of attorney drafted against how the client owns their home and what their pension and policy nominations say, because those frequently pass outside the will entirely. Trusts where a trust does something a plain will could not. Probate when the time comes.
The legal half of a retirement conversation: who can act if the client cannot, whether the will still reflects the family, how the house is owned, and what that means if care has to be paid for.
A settlement can be legally finished and still leave someone unable to afford the house. New will, new nominations, the property work, and the documents that have to change the day the order is made.
Cross-option agreements that make the policy you wrote work: options to buy on both sides with no binding obligation, so HMRC does not treat it as a contract for sale and Business Relief survives. Shareholder agreements, business LPAs and owners' wills that all say the same thing.
Exit readiness, heads of terms, due diligence and the sale itself, alongside the planning you are doing for what the money has to fund afterwards.
These go in the engagement letter.
We will not offer your client accountancy, tax compliance, audit, financial planning or investment advice, and we will not introduce them to anyone who does. If they ask us, we tell them to ask you. The engagement says so, so it binds us.
We act on the matter you refer and nothing else. Where we notice something outside it that is worth looking at, we tell you, and you decide whether it goes anywhere.
A short note when we take the matter on, and another when it closes, saying what was done and what the client was advised. Enough for you to pick the conversation up, and never anything covered by privilege that the client has not agreed we can share.
You get a direct line to the solicitor doing the work. Your client is not passed between fee earners, and neither are you.
Your client gets the scope and the fee in writing before we begin. You are never in the position of having sent someone to an open-ended bill.
Something has changed in the client's life or business. You ask what they want to make sure happens, and whether it would help to have a solicitor look at the legal side.
Facts, documents and gaps written down, with what is urgent, what depends on what and who does each piece. It is not advice and it is not charged for on its own.
Your client agrees the scope and the fee in writing before anything starts. The same solicitor throughout, who will talk to you directly where the client agrees.
A closing note on what was done, so the documents you relied on and the advice you gave still line up.
Reserved legal work comes to AD Solicitors Limited, SRA 8011228. Regulated advice on pensions, investments, protection and mortgages stays with you. We are not authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority and we do not hold ourselves out as able to advise on any of it, so where a client asks us about their pension, their investments or their cover, we say so and send them back to you.
Your client consents to each introduction separately and is told what goes with it, and we share only what we need to start. A referral is never put to them as compulsory, or as a recommendation that has already been made. Each firm engages separately, charges separately and has its own complaints route.
No. We are a firm of solicitors authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. We do not advise on investments, pensions or protection products, and we do not hold ourselves out as able to. That is what makes the arrangement work: there is nothing in your service line for us to sell into.
No, and we are not permitted to. Where a client asks us a question about their investments, pension or protection, we say so and send them back to you. The engagement says so, so it binds us.
Because of the relief. HMRC's Inheritance Tax Manual treats a binding contract for the survivors to buy and the personal representatives to sell as taking the shares outside Business Relief. An agreement giving the survivors an option to buy, which they are free not to exercise, does not have that effect. The policy paying is not the test.
For deaths on or after 6 April 2027, unused pension funds and most death benefits count towards the estate for inheritance tax. Four categories are excluded by statute. Most expression of wish forms and most wills written before 2024 were completed on the old assumption, so they need reviewing whatever the client decides to do.
Any arrangement of that kind has to be agreed in writing and disclosed to the client under the SRA Code of Conduct. It is a conversation to have openly at the start. Where no fee passes either way, there is less for either of us to disclose.
Yes, and the April 2027 change is the natural reason to. We can run a session for your advisers on what has changed and provide a client-facing explainer you send under your own name. Tell us the number of clients and we will scope it against that.
Half an hour on what you would refer, what you would not, and how the undertakings are written down.