by johnireland | Articles
It is one of the most common things we hear across the desk in Worthing. “We gave the house to the children years ago — so it is out of our estate now, isn’t it?” Almost always, the answer is no. The house is still yours for Inheritance Tax, the...
by johnireland | Articles
You sell the family house, move somewhere smaller near the sea, and put the difference in the bank. Sensible. But a question follows you home: does the estate lose the extra Inheritance Tax allowance that was attached to that house? The short answer is no — not...
by johnireland | Articles
A Will can be signed, witnessed and perfectly regular on its face — and still fail. Not because the person who made it lacked the mental capacity to do so, and not because anyone stood over them with a pen. It can fail simply because the court is not satisfied that...
by johnireland | Articles
There is a quiet piece of admin sitting in the diary of almost every company in the country, and it has a hard edge to it. Since 18 November 2025, verifying your identity with Companies House has been a legal requirement rather than a nice idea. For existing...
by johnireland | Articles
It rarely arrives as a decision. Nobody sits down at fifty-four and resolves to have a drink every evening for the next decade. It starts as a reward at the end of a hard week, then a Thursday, then most nights, and the glass quietly grows from a modest pour to...
