Agricultural Wills, Probate and Estate Planning

Wills, Probate and Estate Planning: Expert agriculture lawyers

Undertaking a detailed review of your farm’s activities, we’ll look at the available opportunities and advise on any restructuring that may be necessary to take best advantage of valuable reliefs for tax purposes, usually working in tandem with your own professional advisers.

We often work collaboratively with our expert property and commercial teams where creation of a partnership or company structure is used as a strategy for succession planning, to ensure your farm is best protected for future generations.

We can help you with:

Wills and Trusts - specialist Wills and Trust advice including the creation and ongoing administration of discretionary trusts, designed to transfer business assets and family wealth as part of a long-term succession strategy; utilising our expert team of lawyers and trust accountants.

LPAs – Lasting Power of Attorneys to ensure your affairs, and those of your farming business, can be managed in the event you are unable to act for yourself
Tax – inheritance tax and capital gains tax mitigation including providing advice on the application of agricultural and business property reliefs
Probate – administering farming estates and assisting you with the application for Probate

Call our specialist solicitors on 0808 231 1320

How we assisted our client with capital gains tax advice

Part of a farm was owned by a non-farming client. The rent from the farm was important for the standard of living of the client but had not been changed for some years.

There were to be significant inheritance tax implications on the client’s death due to the non-agricultural nature of some of the assets and the non-involvement of the client in farming activities.

Problems faced

The client required the income in order to support their standard of living but was happy to consider passing on parts of the farm to reduce the potential inheritance tax implications and help the next generation.

Tees’ solution

By careful investigation of current values, the non-agricultural part of the farm, including the farmhouse, cottages and buildings were ascertained and valued by an agricultural agent. The client retained some of the farmland and the farm partnership agreed to pay an increase in rent on this farmland to match the rent which had previously been received. The increase in rent represented a current market rent.

The client was then willing to give up the non-agricultural part of the farm and to assist with the payment of capital gains tax the assets were placed within a discretionary trust and the gain was held over so no tax was actually paid.