Eleanor is a Senior Associate in the Tax & Trusts and Wills & Estates teams.
Supporting clients to draft wills and lasting powers of attorney, mitigating tax liabilities through effective asset protection and succession planning, creating and administering trusts. She deals with estate administration where inheritance tax (IHT) issues arise and post-death variations are required.
In addition, Eleanor also provides specialist advice on the issue of domicile in the context of estate planning and wealth protection and is a member of the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners (STEP).
Key clients include private individuals, high-net-worth families, business owners, entrepreneurs, trustees and estate executors.
Recent examples of how Eleanor has supported clients include:
- restructuring a family settlement following the death of a child, to enable the trust to meet an unexpected tax charge and to avoid a similar charge being triggered in the future upon the death of the two remaining children;
- securing business property relief against inheritance tax for two business owners by arranging for shares in their company to be transferred into a trust in advance of the company being sold, rather than the proceeds of sale being placed in the trust subsequently and attracting tax at 20 per cent;
- restructuring a trust to minimise exposure to a potential IHT charge which had gone unnoticed by lay trustees following a change to the inheritance tax rules in 2006 and which meant it was desirable to hand property over to beneficiaries earlier than the trust deed originally envisaged; and
- rewriting the will of an elderly gentleman to enable him to pass on his estate to his second wife as well as children from a previous marriage as fairly and tax efficiently as possible, creating a trust arrangement which could be used to tweak the provision made in the event of a dispute arising.