For many business owners and entrepreneurs their business represents their family's future security. Protecting that legacy requires careful planning.

We understand that for business owners, their business and personal lives are often closely linked. When you have worked hard to build your business, it is important to protect your investment and secure the future for your family and employees.

We offer guidance on creating robust succession plans that ensure a smooth transition, whether that involves a handover to the next generation, a sale, or another strategic approach. We ensure that you and your family or employees continue to benefit in the long term.

Our private wealth team advise on:

• Business succession planning

• Structuring business ownership for tax efficiency

• Planning for exit strategies or generational handover

• Dealing with sales, management buyouts, or employee ownership trusts

• Protection of business and personal assets in the event of divorce or incapacity

• Family Investment Companies

Whether you are looking to pass your business to the next generation or prepare for a future sale, our solicitors provide practical, forward-thinking advice that aligns with your long-term goals.

Business Transition Through Employee Ownership: We guided a specialised manufacturing business through sale to an Employee Ownership Trust, enabling the owners' gradual exit while securing the company's future for employees. Our work included establishing the EOT structure, ensuring regulatory compliance, and developing governance procedures including an employee council.

Strategic Corporate Restructure: Working alongside our corporate team, we completed an urgent corporate restructure and minority shareholding transfer into a family trust ahead of Budget changes. This required coordinating trust establishment, associated documentation, and integrated Will planning. All completed to tight deadlines.

Successful Business Succession: We assisted a family-owned company with share transfers to family members and a bespoke family trust. The restructuring optimised minority discounts for valuation purposes while enabling smooth business succession and wealth transfer to the next generation.

Complex Estate with Hidden Wealth: We administered an estate where initial appearances suggested modest means, but investigation revealed shareholdings exceeding £3 million. We navigated HMRC "one credit" procedures, managed Inheritance Act 1975 claims, addressed Will validity challenges, and resolved beneficiary disputes demonstrating our capability with unexpectedly complex situations.

Passing agricultural estates on to the next generation requires careful planning that balances family priorities, tax considerations and the long term future of the business. Our private wealth team advises farming families on protecting rural assets, planning succession and preserving wealth for future generations.

Farmers, estate owners and rural landowners face a unique set of challenges when it comes to succession planning, taxation, and land management. Our team has extensive expertise in advising agricultural clients on how to manage the handover to the next generation, including planning for inheritance tax exposure, offering advice on the division of assets between farming and non-farming beneficiaries and structuring farming partnerships and businesses for maximum benefit.

We regularly advise farmers and landowners on:

• Inheritance Tax planning and agricultural property relief (APR)

• Farm succession planning and intergenerational transfers

• Trusts and land ownership structures

• Land sales and option agreements

We're currently supporting a farming family through complex estate administration involving shares in the farming business, investment companies, partnership interests, and land with development potential exceeding £3 million. Our work includes deed of variation strategies, corporate restructuring for bank refinancing to expand operations, and coordinating Will updates across three generations to balance wealth transfer between active farming members and other beneficiaries.

High-earning professionals need comprehensive legal strategies to protect their growing personal wealth. We can advise individuals on how to manage risk, optimise tax efficiency, and ensure long-term financial security through carefully drafted wills, trusts, and family wealth structures. Whether you're preparing for retirement, navigating marriage or divorce, or providing financially for the next generation, our bespoke legal services are designed to align with your financial goals, and family responsibilities.

Our private wealth team can safeguard your family wealth through:

• Wills, trusts, and estate planning

• Wealth protection during marriage or divorce (including pre-nuptial agreements)

• Family investment companies

• Planning for retirement and care needs

Your estate may include a family business, investment properties, trusts, pensions, agricultural land or overseas interests, each requiring careful consideration as part of your wider estate plan.

Our specialists advise on complex wealth structures and work with you to ensure every aspect of your planning supports your long term ambitions by considering your personal, family and business interests together.

Many of our clients have worked with us for years. We provide ongoing advice to help keep your arrangements up to date to protect your legacy for future generations.