When did you last look at a will or an LPA and actually understand what it was trying to do?

Wills are still written in near-Dickensian language, which makes them hard to decode.

And LPAs come with limits that catch people out all the time: what an attorney can and can’t gift, whether they can set up a trust, what happens if the attorney themselves loses capacity?

Join us online at 1pm on Wednesday 9 September for a conversation about wills and LPAs with Shaun Moore, Technical Specialist at Quilter.

With pensions moving into the IHT net, a lot of existing plans are suddenly out of date, and that makes this a good moment to revisit both documents.

This isn’t about which form to fill in or which portal to log into. It’s a planning conversation about why these documents matter, what they can and can’t do, and where the pitfalls are.

During this Assembly we’ll cover

What can you expect to take away?

A clearer grasp of wills and LPAs that goes beyond the paperwork, so you can spot the planning issues and pitfalls when they land on your desk.

Even very experienced paraplanners can trip over obstacles lurking in the shadows of IHT.

So we invited Aegon’s tax and trusts manager, Elaine Cruickshank, to join host, Richard Allum, for an online Assembly to help you dodge the IHT perils.

Over the course of one lunch-hour, Elaine:

What can you expect to take away?

Watch or listen now and you’ll have a sharper grasp of the IHT detail that’s easy to get wrong. Plus the confidence to spot these issues in your own client cases.

Watch or listen now

Missed it? Then follow the links below to download Elaine’s slides, watch the replay or catch up with the podcast now.

The outstanding questions

There were so many questions on this Assembly that we ran out of time, so Elaine has provided us with the answers to the outstanding questions, as well as provide a clarification on the final question of the Assembly.

Can the small gifts exemption and the annual £3,000 exemption be given to the same recipient?

If a gift in excess of the £250 small gifts exemption is made, then as this gift is more than the small gifts exemption, the full gift would be allocated against the annual exemption (assuming that this was available).

Why is it called Inheritance Tax? Shouldn’t it be called Estate Tax, as it is (normally) the estate that pays?

“Inheritance Tax” is a better reflection of what the tax is intended to cover — rather than simply being a tax on an estate at death, there could also be IHT applying to lifetime transfers.

Is it best to space significant gifts at least 7 years apart then?

Each gift has its own 7-year clock, but whenever a gift is being made you have to consider the cumulative impact of any gifts made in the previous 7 years. If the donor dies within 7 years of a gift, earlier gifts use up the nil-rate band first before later gifts are considered. Making very large gifts close together can therefore increase the IHT exposure of later gifts, if death occurs within 7 years. Taper relief may reduce the IHT on gifts made more than 3 years before death, but it does not reduce the value of the gift itself for nil-rate band purposes.

Does tax-free income from a beneficiary’s pension (where the spouse dies under age 75), either through an annuity or under FAD, count towards regular income when considering gifting out of surplus income?

This is a grey area and will probably require a tax case to provide clarification. As this money is completely exempt from income tax, HMRC could view the regular withdrawals of this nature as capital rather than income.

Is there a length of time for the ‘main residence’ qualification to be lost?

For the Residence Nil Rate Band, there is no specific minimum or maximum period between the property ceasing to be the deceased’s main residence and their death. The key point is that the property must have been a qualifying residential interest, meaning a property that the deceased occupied as a residence at some point during their ownership. For the downsizing addition, they have to downsize or dispose of the property on or after 8 July 2015, but there is no stipulated timeframe between the date of downsizing/disposal and death.

What if they still own the property but have also moved into a care home? 

A property can qualify even if the individual was living in a care home at death, provided the property had been their main residence at some point and they leave the property to their direct descendants. The amount of residence nil rate band available will generally be the lower of the available RNRB and the value of the qualifying residential interest passing to direct descendants, and it may also be reduced by the taper reduction if the estate exceeds £2 million.

If they own a house worth less than the RNRB, should they upsize to make the most of it?

If they upsize and buy a bigger house, the value of the estate would generally remain unchanged — they now have a larger property and less cash. However, if they live in the bigger property as their main residence and leave this to their direct descendants in their will, then they could in theory qualify for the full residence nil rate band if the value of the house was equal to or higher than the residence nil rate band and the £2,000,000 tapering threshold was not breached. However, tax mitigation isn’t the only factor to consider here — there would be the costs of moving house, larger council tax and utility bills etc, which could be more significant than any IHT saving achieved.

Can RNRB apply to an IIP trust, where some people have moved their home into a solicitor’s trust and continued to live in it?

It sounds as though this type of arrangement would potentially be a gift with reservation of benefit, with the value of the property remaining in their IHT estates. Whether or not the RNRB would apply in this scenario would depend on the provisions of the trust. Are the direct descendants the beneficiaries of the trust, and do the trust provisions meet the conditions of ‘directly inheriting’ the property?

Trusts used to be the kind of thing you’d come across every now and again. Something to dust off the knowledge for, handle carefully, then put back on the shelf.

That’s changing. With pension IHT changes on the horizon, trust planning is becoming a regular fixture on paraplanners’ desks and the paraplanners best placed to support their clients will be the ones who can approach it with genuine confidence, not just familiarity.

This Assembly is designed to help you get there.

This practical Assembly takes you from the foundations right through to real-world trust planning decisions.

Shaun Moore, Tax and Financial Planning Expert at Quilter, joins host Richard Allum for this Assembly. Together they work through the essentials and the less obvious bits that every paraplanner working with trusts needs to have at their fingertips.

During this Assembly, we:

What can you expect to take away?

You’ll leave with a clearer, more confident grasp of trust planning, not just the theory, but the practical judgement to apply it. Whether you’re doing in-depth trust research or writing up recommendations that involve one, this session gives you a framework and a reference point you can keep coming back to.

Think about the last time you worked on a financial plan for a family with a child or adult with special educational needs or a disability (SEND). How confident were you that the plan truly reflected what that family needs, not just now, but for the long term?

As paraplanners, we’re in a position to make a real difference but only if we understand what good planning for these families actually looks like.

So in this Assembly first-time host Peter Spence from Fintuity was joined by Ali Fanshawe and Rhiannon Gogh, co-founders of SENDA who are specialists who work with financial and legal advisers to deliver safer, smarter planning for SEND families.

All three participants have children with SEND needs.

What the Assembly covers

Together, Peter, Ali and Rhiannon talked about what special needs planning really involves, where traditional advice tends to fall short, and what paraplanners can do to fill that gap.

The conversation covers:

What can you expect to take away?

By tuning into this Assembly, you’ll get a clearer sense of where special needs planning is different and what to start thinking about when planning for SEND needs. It’s an introduction to the subject rather than a complete guide. But it’s a great primer which offers practical ideas you can use right now. Ideas that will give confidence about doing the right thing for clients whose plans need to take account of family members with special educational needs and disabilities.

The tax landscape has shifted significantly over the past couple of years. Allowance reductions, rising dividend tax rates and the proposed extension of IHT to unused pensions means there’s plenty for paraplanners to get to grips with — and plenty of opportunity to add real value for clients.

This Assembly cuts through the complexity and gives you a clearer picture of how different tax wrappers work in practice, so you can make more confident decisions about which solution is right for which client.

Host, Richard Allum is joined by Elaine Cruickshank, tax and trusts manager at Aegon for a practical, no-nonsense look at onshore bonds, offshore bonds, GIAs and trust solutions with an agnostic perspective that keeps the focus firmly on what’s best for the client in front of you.

What we explored

We looked at how recent tax changes are prompting advisers and paraplanners to revisit wrapper choice, and went through the kind of comparative thinking that helps you work out when a bond might be preferable to a GIA or when onshore makes more sense than offshore.

We also looked at how onshore bonds are actually taxed (including a common misconception that’s worth clearing up), which wrapper tends to suit which client circumstances, and how trust solutions fit into the picture, particularly in the context of the proposed IHT changes to pensions.

What can you expect to take away?

After catching up on the Assembly, you’ll have a clearer understanding of the tax treatment of different wrappers, a more confident sense of when each option is likely to work best, and some practical frameworks for thinking about trust planning solutions.

We’ve been recording ‘Technically speaking’ sessions with Utmost’s Steve Sayer for a few years now.

And because they offer really crunchy case-study based content, they’re really popular with paraplanners. 

But we like to plan ahead so late last year, we sat down with Steve and the team at Utmost to talk about the ‘Technically speaking’ plans for 2026. During the conversation, Steve talked about each of the major tax planning milestones that stem from the measures announced by the Chancellor since October 2024 and stretch ahead to 2031.

And when Steve revealed that he had a single slide that set out each of the changes against a timeline, we decided – there and then – that was definitely something paraplanners would like to hear more about.

So we invited Steve into the studio to talk us through it.

And here’s the result: Steve Sayer’s guide to the tax change timeline until April 2031. In it, Steve covers inheritance tax and the domicile regime, excluded property trusts and the new foreign income and gains regime, the agricultural and business property relief changes, pension death benefits in 2027, plus the effects of the freezing of tax bands until 2031.

Plus you can download his slide using the link below.

Pensions will become subject to inheritance tax (IHT) from April 2027, but how much of a role does protection play in your approach to building IHT strategies for your clients? And how confident are you about the protection options that are available to you?

But with IHT receipts expected to almost double, and sweeping changes to business and agricultural property relief already landing from April 2026, paraplanners can expect more and more clients to want to explore all the options.

So at this Assembly, host Richard Allum was joined by Alan Jenkinson, protection specialist at Scottish Widows, to walk through the essentials. During their lunch-hour discussion, Richard and Alan unpack IHT and how it works, run through the key exemptions and reliefs, and explore how protection fits into an IHT planning conversation alongside gifting strategies, trust structures and the normal expenditure out of income rules.

There’s also a really useful section on the underwriting process: what to do when a client has health risk factors, when concurrent applications make sense, and why a declined application isn’t necessarily the end of the road.

If you’re looking for a solid grounding in this area — or a practical refresher before your next client review — this one’s well worth an hour of your time.

The Government’s Finance Bill which includes the provision for pensions to become subject to inheritance tax (IHT) has reached a critical point in its progress through Parliament.

But as James Jones-Tinsley of Barnett Waddingham explains in this 15-minute briefing recorded especially for the Paraplanners’ Assembly, the measure isn’t necessarily a done deal.

Why the next few weeks matter

He suggests that the government’s recent decision to raise its proposed threshold on agricultural and business property relief from £1 million to £2.5 million indicates that the government can be persuaded to rethink its plans.

So the next few weeks matter. And that’s why James is encouraging advice professionals and clients to write to their MPs – not least to encourage the government to consider the practical consequences of its planned changes. 

For instance, how reasonable and realistic is it to expect personal representatives, many who are likely to be recently bereaved family members, to successfully negotiate their way through complex pension death benefit rules against the clock?

And is adding to the anxiety of family members worth it when the government’s own projections suggest this will raise £1.5 billion by 2029-30 – a fraction of the £6 billion that is already being collected thanks to freezing of allowances?

What you’ll learn by watching and listening

If you want to know the latest on the progress of the law resulting from last November’s budget and its consequence for advice colleagues and clients, then you’re in the right place.It’s more than a year since speculation ahead of last autumn’s Budget led to a surge of savers raiding their pension pots in a bid to beat rumoured changes to tax-free lump sums. 

But when no changes were announced and people sought to reverse their withdrawals, they discovered that the 30-day cancellation rule didn’t apply. Or did it?

That confusion over conduct of business rules led to calls for HMRC and the FCA to clarify whether or not savers could cancel – and they’ve now responded.

Budget measures are often the subject of media speculation. But the level of attention in the run-up to the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s Budget statement on 26 November 2025 was unprecedented.

So did the reality match the hype? 

For our final Assembly of 2025, we invited Les Cameron from M&G Wealth to join us and share his latest thoughts on what paraplanners need to know following Rachel Reeves’s statement.

Les covers a bunch of different topics that include:

Plus more besides. So if you want to catch up with what’s been announced, what’s changing, or what’s staying the same, this is the Assembly for you.

Assemblies featuring the M&G technical team in 2025

This is the fifth Assembly of the year featuring experts from M&G Wealth’s technical team. Here are the other four from 2025:

February 2025 – Pensions, death and taxes (with Les)
April 2025 – A guide to investment bond essentials for paraplanners (with Barrie Dawson)
August 2025 – Tax wrappers: which, why and when? (with Neil Macleod)
September 2025 – The pension IHT bombshell has landed – now what? (with Les)

When a client dies, their will isn’t necessarily the final word on how their estate gets distributed. Deeds of variation and disclaimers give beneficiaries a valuable window – two years from death – to reshape inheritances in ways that can reduce tax bills and improve family outcomes – often both.

In the latest episode in our ‘Technically speaking’ series, we invited Steve Sayer from Utmost to join host Richard Allum, to cast his expert gaze on the post-death planning issues that paraplanners need to consider.

During the hour-long session, Steve explains:

What’s more, the session also explores disclaimers – the simpler but more restrictive alternative to variations. Steve clarifies:

Throughout the episode, Steve offers examples to help illustrate concepts such as periodic charges and ten-year anniversaries.

If you’re working on suitability reports that cover post-death planning options, are supporting a client following a death, or would just like to give your technical knowledge a boost, this is the ideal ‘Technically speaking’ episode for you.