Bio
Sarah is a Private Client Associate.
Sarah specialises in agricultural work. Her clients are farming families, farming partnerships and those with agricultural land and assets.
Sarah offers a combination of technical legal knowledge and a practical understanding of the issues facing rural clients to guide them through the continually evolving complexities and challenges facing the agricultural sector.
She has expertise and experience in all areas of private client work including wills, trusts and lasting powers of attorney, supporting clients with bereavement, assisting with farming business matters and advising on planning for the future, often dealing with complicated succession planning issues to promote smooth transition of the farming businesses between generations.
Sarah also prepares Partnership Agreements for those farming clients who wish to formalise their business structures and gain the tax benefits of having land and assets within a partnership. She then prepares or review documents such as wills and lasting powers of attorney to ensure they work with the terms of the Partnership Agreement, protecting the business and assets, as well as the individual partners.
Sarah also offers tax planning advice where required to help protect assets and the farming business through the generations, including advice on lifetime gifting, land transfers and inheritance tax planning. Recent changes to Agricultural and Business Property Relief have presented complex issues where my expertise has allowed me to work with clients to avoid potentially significant tax liabilities, without which some clients would ultimately have faced the loss of their farms for future generations.
Examples of Sarah’s work include:
- Advising farming clients on the options available to secure Agricultural Relief following the government’s decision to limit 100% relief for Agricultural and Business Property Relief.
- Setting up trusts and transferring land and assets to achieve a business structure that maximised Agricultural and Business Property Relief ahead of the imposition of the new rules.
- Dealing with complex probate matters with farmland and assets and the administration of the estate to protect the farm assets and mitigate tax.