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Protects — the business
If you died or lost capacity tomorrow, who could sign, pay wages, deal with the bank, hold your customers? For most owners the honest answer is nobody — and an ordinary will and LPA, drafted without the business in mind, often make things worse rather than better. This is planning for the two days every business hopes never come.
Death is handled by your will and the agreements around it: who inherits the shares or the business, whether your family wants ownership or value, and how your co-owners buy your share without a fire sale. Incapacity is handled by powers of attorney: who runs things while you're alive but can't act. Owners routinely plan for the first and forget the second — yet incapacity is the one that freezes the bank account on a Tuesday with wages due on Friday.
A will that just says "everything to my spouse" treats the business like a savings account. Real questions need answering in the drafting: should the shares pass to family at all, or should family receive the value while the business passes to those who'll run it? Do your articles of association or partnership agreement even permit your intended gift — because if they conflict, the agreement usually wins and the will fails at the worst moment. Should shares pass through a trust so relief is used well and a young or uninvolved family isn't handed a company to run? We draft the will and check it against your company paperwork, so the two don't fight.
Where there are business partners or fellow shareholders, the cleanest outcome on a death is usually: the survivors get the business, the family gets the money. A cross-option agreement, typically funded by life insurance on each owner, gives the survivors the option to buy and the estate the option to sell — drafted as options rather than a binding contract precisely so business relief isn't jeopardised. The insurance side is regulated work, arranged through our sister firm at the same address; the estate side is ours. One roof, one joined-up plan.
Your personal LPA probably names your spouse — the right person for your home life and often the wrong person to run a company. A separate business LPA appoints someone commercially capable — a co-director, a trusted manager, your accountant — with authority confined to the business. Without one, a sole director losing capacity can leave a company literally unable to act: no one authorised to make payments, sign contracts or instruct the bank. For sole directors and sole traders this document isn't a refinement; it's the difference between a business that survives the year and one that doesn't. The wider picture is on our LPA page.
Relief generally needs the business to be a trading concern — mainly investment businesses don't qualify — and assets you own personally but let your company use get, at best, only 50% relief — and only if conditions are met (for example, you control the company). Large cash piles beyond working needs can be challenged as excepted assets. And ownership generally must have lasted two years. None of this is a reason to panic; it's a reason to have the estate plan and the accounts looked at together, which is how we work — alongside your accountant, with regulated advice on tap where the funding and pensions side comes in.
A sole trader's business dies with them unless the will keeps it alive: authority for someone to run or wind down the enterprise, and clarity over the tools, vehicles, stock and goodwill that are the business. Farming families face all of the above plus agricultural relief interacting with the new cap, homes tied to the land, and successors who've worked the farm for decades against siblings who haven't — some of the most delicate drafting there is, and work we take slowly and carefully.
Free consultation, online or at your place of business. Fixed fee agreed in writing before any work begins.
Business estate planning
Very possibly: nothing can happen at all. If no one else is authorised, the company may be unable to pay wages or suppliers, sign anything, or operate its bank account — while a Court of Protection application grinds on for months. Staff and customers rarely wait that long. A business LPA naming someone commercially capable lets them manage your business assets and use your shareholder votes — for example, to appoint a new director. It doesn't make them a director in your place, so the company's articles and a succession plan need checking too. For sole directors it's the single most urgent document on this page.
Only if your company's articles and any shareholders' agreement allow it — many contain pre-emption or transfer restrictions that override the will, forcing a sale or blocking the gift. The will and the company paperwork have to be checked against each other; discovering the conflict after a death is expensive and bitter. It's a standard part of our process.
If the combined qualifying business and agricultural value exceeds £2.5 million per owner — which a successful trading company plus premises, or a family farm, can reach faster than people expect — then yes: the excess now gets only 50% relief — up to 20% inheritance tax on that part, where before there may have been none. Unused allowance can pass to a surviving spouse or civil partner, but the value of the business by the second death, and whether it still qualifies then, can change the outcome. That is why pre-2026 plans need re-reading.
An informal understanding binds no one when it matters: your co-owner faces your grieving family across a valuation dispute with no funding in place. A cross-option agreement fixes the mechanism and the valuation basis in advance, life cover provides the money on the day it's needed, and the option structure is chosen deliberately so business relief isn't put at risk. It converts the worst week of everyone's life into a process that simply executes.
Between the two firms at Lynfield, yes. The wills, trusts and business LPAs are our estate planning work; the life cover funding a cross-option, and the pensions and investments around your exit, are regulated advice through our sister firm. Where your accountant or solicitor holds part of the picture, we work alongside them rather than around them. The point is one plan that joins up — not four professionals who've never spoken.