Planning Your Estate

Planning Your Estate

There are two strands to estate planning: making sure the right people benefit from your estate and ensuring you don’t leave them with an unwanted tax bill. Not planning means you pass control over who benefits to the State, who will decide who gets what and how much. And, if your estate exceeds £325,000 (in the 2010/2011 tax year) in value, the State will want 40% of any excess, known as inheritance tax.

Many people don’t think of themselves as rich and therefore make the mistake of thinking they can’t possibly have an inheritance tax problem. This may have been true a few decades ago but we now live in an age of widespread home ownership and inflated property prices: a house on its own can take you over the inheritance tax threshold. Fortunately there are steps you can take before you die so that after you die your beneficiaries don’t have to sell chunks of your estate to pay what can be a significant tax bill.

And, to make sure those beneficiaries are your chosen beneficiaries rather than those decided by the State you must have a valid will. There are no circumstances where you don’t need a will.

Your home may be repossessed if you do not keep up repayments on your mortgage

The guidance and advice contained in this website is subject to the UK regulatory regime and is therefore targeted at consumers based in the UK. Mortgage and Investment Choices is an appointed representative of Intrinsic Mortgage Planning Limited, which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority. Intrinsic Mortgage Planning Limited is entered on the FSA register (http://www.fsa.gov.uk/register/) under reference FRN No 492647.