Leaving Behind More Than Memories

Estate and Succession Planning

If you wish to leave behind more than memories, you would like to give a monetary gift to loved ones or a charity. You must seek advice to protect your legacy best and involve the family so each beneficiary knows who's getting the family heirlooms when the time comes.?

You have accumulated your assets over many years, so the next step is to ensure you pass them on to your loved ones. You have been considering what to do for a succession plan and are unsure how or when to start. Some of your loved ones are living in distant parts of the world, and succession implications can be complex; you feel you should start planning soon. Therefore, you would like to speak to an expert about how best to proceed.

As people are now holding crypto, they likely keep them in a hot or cold wallet, which means they have personal custody of the private key, which is essential to allow access to their crypto assets. The risk is that your loved ones are unaware you are holding crypto, and it's a high possibility that they will not know how to find the private keys is exceptionally high if you don't have a written plan.

You could appoint a particular individual with some knowledge of crypto to be an executor or a trustee of your will or trust, leaving instructions to that person on how to access the private keys. Still, we can work with you to create a bespoke plan that fits your circumstances. Individuals living outside their home country should take specific advice as more than one country could claim taxing rights over the same crypto assets. There is minimal consensus between countries on issues like the location of tokens or what crypto assets even are.

Clients commonly put wills that apply to assets in specific jurisdictions facilitating the probate process in countries where they own property from a succession perspective. For example, they could have the UK will, a US will and a third will covering everything else. But this might not work for crypto if the location of the crypto is not precise. It might be appropriate to make a specific legacy of crypto in your will, bearing in mind that your choice becomes a public document on death. So, please talk to us about a plan now to make sure the value of your crypto investments passes to your family as smoothly and as tax-efficiently as possible.

A large part of this is looking for tax-efficient ways to gift money while you're alive and leave money on your death without reducing your standard of living or leaving your loved ones with a hefty, unexpected Inheritance Tax (IHT) bill.

Succession planning can be a balancing act involving both personal legacy and tax efficiency. Seeking technical and legal advice is essential to achieving the very best outcome.