Life interests and second marriages

The recent controversy over taxation of trusts (as mentioned in last week’s email) highlighted the importance of using trusts for people in second marriages.

With over 50% of marriages likely to end in divorce, there are now millions of people who have re-married but have children from previous relationships. Their wishes are often that on their death they would like their spouse to be provided for but wish to ensure that their wealth will eventually find its way to their children.

A simple way to do this is to create a life interest trust where assets (such as the family home) are held for the benefit of the spouse whilst that spouse is alive but pass to others (e.g. children from a first marriage) on the death of the spouse.

If this applies to you, please speak to your wills adviser or email Janice@stephen-hill.co.uk for more information

World Cup Warning!

We are all hoping that Sven and the Boys will do us proud during the world cup in Germany, but SME’s face an increased risk of litigation during the world cup due to employees emailing copyrighted world cup video clips and photographs according to software specialist Softalk.

Softalk are urging managers to issue reminders to their staff not to use the business email to circulate copyrighted material another step to be taken is to update the settings in your email server software.

Speak to your IT specialist will be able to the update the filters in your email server software alternatively if you would like to speak to someone about this please email Cheryl@stephen-hill.co.uk who will put you in touch with a specialist that we work with.

Race for Life – Update

Emma, Jo and Jenny would like to say a big thank you to all those who sponsored them in the race for life. The girls did really well and raised a lot of money for cancer research.