Protecting your wealth for you, your family and successive generations

  • If you or your family have substantial assets, it may be important to you to arrange your affairs in the most tax-efficient way
  • Good planning can help you avoid paying inheritance tax, capital gains tax and income tax unnecessarily
  • We can create a legal structure tailored to you and your family’s needs

What is wealth protection?

Wealth protection is the process of securing and preserving an individual’s financial assets and property. This can include estate planning, insurance, and investment strategies.

How to protect your wealth

Protecting your wealth is an important part of ensuring that you are dealing with your money in the most effective way. However, it can also be a complicated process if not clearly understood. There are several forms of tax that you may be paying unnecessarily, including inheritance tax, capital gains tax and income tax.

You may also want to protect your wealth from potential threats such as spendthrift family members or dissipation through divorce and remarriage, and ensure that it is passed on to future generations in the way that you would like. Our specialists can ensure that your wealth is protected in the best way possible, and help you manage it effectively.

Giving you the peace of mind you need regarding the protection of your wealth

Our specialist team of tax and trust lawyers can help you protect your wealth by creating and managing the right legal structure tailored to your individual situation. This is a complex area of the law, and our specialists will guide you through the more difficult issues.

The first step is to ensure that we have a thorough understanding of your family circumstances, and what exactly you want to achieve. We will then review all the options with you and, if necessary, consult with other professionals such as Independent Financial Advisers, to come up with the best solution for you. On your instructions, we will draft all the necessary documentation, put the legal strategy in place and, if required, manage it for the future.

Why choose us as your wealth protection solicitors?

By forming a long-term relationship based on mutual trust and a detailed knowledge of your family’s affairs, we are able to look after your interests and those of your family for successive generations. Our team of experts are specialised in protecting wealth and ensuring it is a straightforward and simple process with your interests at the core of all we do.

We have offices in Southampton, Guildford, Lymington, Woking, London and Richmond and we offer specialist support to clients both locally and nationally. Contact us for more information on how we can help.

Frequently asked questions

Our private wealth lawyers have answered some of your most common questions. If you can’t find the information that you’re looking for, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Wealth protection is a term which describes the tools, processes and management strategies that can be used to help individuals and families legally protect their assets for the next generation. Wealth protection can take many different forms, as the best course of action is unique to every individual situation.

Some wealth protection options can include, but are not limited to:

  • Life insurance: which helps any dependents financially in the event that you should pass away prematurely.
  • Critical illness protection: which is a policy that will pay out if diagnosed with certain serious illness.
  • Making a will: which will help ensure that assets are divided according to the living wishes of the deceased.
  • Creating trusts: which is a way to pass an estate on to specified beneficiaries under a set of specific circumstances e.g. when children of the deceased reaches a certain age.

Appointing someone with lasting powers of attorney – which is nominating one or several trusted people to make decisions on your behalf in the future if you lose the capacity to do so yourself.

While people don’t tend to enter into a marriage thinking that it will end in divorce, sadly it does sometimes happen and it can have very significant consequences for wealth if no legal steps have been taken to help preserve assets for future generations of the family.

Some of the ways to help protect wealth from divorce include, but are not limited to:

  • Prenuptial agreements: while not legally binding in the UK currently, a prenuptial agreement detailing specific assets owned by one party before the marriage and what should happen to them in the event of a divorce are usually adhered to in court if it was freely entered into by both parties.
  • Postnuptial agreements: essentially the same as a prenuptial agreement but can be entered into anytime after getting married.
  • Trusts: can be set up to protect money destined for those who are too young to handle their own financial affairs at present, or are not capable of doing so for another reason. Trusts must be set up in the correct way in order to defend a potential challenge in the event of a divorce.

All of these wealth protection measures will need expert legal advice in order to ensure that they are done in accordance with all requirements.