Helen has extensive experience in advising on a wide range of Private Client work. Her practice predominantly focuses on lifetime tax planning, simple and tax planning wills, lasting powers of attorney, and probate and trusts, including personal injury, other lifetime trusts and will trusts.
In addition, Helen has a sizeable Court of Protection practice acting as a professional deputy. She also advises lay clients on the deputyship process as well as statutory will applications.
Expertise
- Advising on and drafting lifetime trusts and will trusts
- Advice to lay trustees in relation to their duties and the running of trusts on a day-to-day basis, which includes monitoring performance, submitting tax returns and drafting trust documents such as trustees’ resolutions, trust accounts and deeds of appointment and retirement
- Drafting personal injury trusts
- Cross-border estates and foreign wills (including dealing with questions of domicile for purposes of IHT in conjunction with accountants) and businesses (including advising on issues relating to BPR) and claiming woodland and agricultural relief
- Wills, both simple and complex
- Applications for, and contesting the application of, statutory wills
- Acting as a professional attorney for high-net-worth clients under lasting powers of attorney as well as advising lay clients in their role as attorney
- Acting as a professional deputy as well as advising lay clients in relation to their own appointment and their duties as deputy
- Acted as a Professional Trustee for client, who inherited money from her grandmother and aunt on their deaths. This money was held in two separate trusts for our client, as she struggles with mental, social, and emotional health and ability to independently manage her finances
- Actied as Deputy for a disabled individual after the lay deputy’s retirement from the role. When the Deputyship was acquired, significant savings and a new budget was required, due to the previous unchecked spending and investment regime leaving a small investment portfolio for our client to live off
- Appointed as Client’s Professional Trsutee after referral from his financial adviser concerning a settlement payout after a road traffic accident. Client has complex needs and so planning was required to maximise local authority funding.
- Client has quadriplegic cerebral palsy and is therefore unable to manage his own finances. Instruction was given to take over the deputyship and an extensive review was required of the finances as the previous deputy had not considered the cashflow position and affordability of paying large gratuitous care payments on top of privately funded care. His funds are now set to last until he is 99 years old whereas it would have previously run out in his 70s
- Client suffered a traumatic brain injury in 2015 in a road traffic accident which resulted permanent cognitive impairment. Appointment of deputyship was obtained as client struggles handling large sums of money. Global capitalised settlement in excess of £17M.
- Drafted the Will for client shortly before he died of a terminal illness. After the client’s death we acted as co-executor to administer the deceased’s estate alongside his widow. Also appointed to act as Professional Trustee under the Will Trust, as well as subsequently for a separate trust, for client’s two children
- Instructed to administer the estates of a wife and husband who had mixed domicile and world-wide assets of circa £1 Billion.
Experience
- Saving an estate £60,000 in Inheritance Tax (IHT) by arguing a CGT rather than IHT liability with the Revenue
- Successfully obtaining agricultural relief on a lifetime gift, saving tens of thousands of pounds in IHT.
- Acting on behalf of a father who had been excluded from his son’s statutory will by the ex-wife and ensuring he was named as a beneficiary
- Making an ex-parte application for removal of a deputy and being appointed as an interim deputy
- Acting in an estate with assets in England, Canada, Scotland and Spain and claiming Woodland Relief
- Acting as a court-appointed executor after the removal of a professional executor for charitable beneficiaries including those in the US
Please note: The experience list above may include examples of work completed prior to joining Keystone Law.
Recognition
Recommend in The Legal 500 2025 for Personal tax, trusts and probate
Recognised in Spear’s 500 2022-2024 as a Recommended Tax Lawyer
Helen is a member of the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple and a full member of the Society for Trust and Estates Practitioners (STEP).
Career
Helen qualified as a solicitor in 2011. Prior to joining Keystone Law in 2018, she worked at Metcalfe Solicitors.