Clare Sutherland
Appearances
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
Whatever happens, you're kind of protected. If you fall poorly and you can't make decisions, you're protected. If you pass away, it's just a lot less stress.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
It's best practice to update them, but it would never invalidate a will. So if your residential address changed or your business address changed, then there will be track of that. You know, you will have changed it in these houses. it will be obvious that that is still you. So it would not invalidate the will or the lasting powers of attorney, but it's always best practice to update them.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
I can appreciate, you know, sometimes you just don't want to pay additional costs to do that. So it's a personal decision.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
It could cause extra complication, yeah, at the point of having to deal with the estate. You're going to have to Find the paper trail or, you know, prove. So it adds complexity. So to keep it up to date is definitely the best practice and what I would advise, obviously.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
already stressful situation you know if they're dealing with loss they're already suffering a lot of grief they don't want to have to deal with finances issues around business issues around personal so it really helps the ones that you leave behind really that makes sense that makes sense okay so what should a normal person so a regular everyday person what should they have in place as a sort of standard okay standard there are two things to have in place so a will
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
Yeah, absolutely. Because it's best practice. It's for the business. So...
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
go to my website which is www.clairesutherland.com there will be there's an inquiry form on there my phone number's on there there's the ability to book a free 15-minute consultation with me so every access point to me is on that website and I'd be glad to help you brilliant thank you very much Claire well thank you for your time it's been really good to speak to you and I look forward to speaking to you next week guys in the meantime have a great rest of your week bye for now
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
A will essentially, especially if you've got children under the age of 18, a will is going to allow you to say, if anything happens to the parents, who's going to look after those children? So that's really vital. It also allows you to say the assets that you own, where do you want them to go? You know, this is your choice. This is what you've worked all your life to build.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
This is your whole estate. Who do you want to inherit that? So a will is really, really important. You can upgrade a will by adding protective trust.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
So if things like protecting your children's inheritance against divorce settlements in the future, if things like securing the value of your home against care fees, if you need to go into care in the future are important to you, then you can put protective trust in that will. And there's so many benefits to that. The second thing that you should have is a lasting power of attorney.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
Nobody likes to think of yourself going through accident or illness. which means that you can no longer make decisions for yourself, but these things happen. An elastic power of attorney is a powerful document. It means you are giving the legal right to somebody you love and trust to make decisions for you.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
Hello, everybody. I'm Claire Sutherland from Claire Sutherland Wills and Trusts, and I specialize in making wills, trusts, and lasting powers of attorney simple for people. I like to take the complication out and make sure that people understand what's available to them to protect their business, themselves, their families, and just make it easy.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
Are you okay?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
So lasting powers of attorney give the legal authority to the people that you choose as attorneys. That might be your children. It might be your partner. It might be your sisters, your siblings. But essentially you're saying if I develop something like Alzheimer's, dementia, if I have a stroke, if I'm in a coma, if I'm in any situation that I can no longer act myself.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
then this person is able to look after my property, my finances or my health decisions. So what care home I go into, how I'm looked after, what diet I eat. So really, really important documents. A lot of people think that's just for the elderly. But money saving expert, you know, Martin Lewis is massive advocate for these documents. They're not just for when you're old.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
So the health and welfare lasting powers of attorney. There's some major things here. So firstly, if you were ever in a position where life sustaining treatment decisions needed to be made for you.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
you are on a life support machine and the quality of your life, if you continued, was going to be reduced, you can essentially give your attorneys the right to say, actually, I know that my mum, my sister, whoever the be, the one that's affected, would not want to live in a vegetative state or in a state where their health was reduced to the point that their life
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
was no longer of the quality they enjoyed previously, then you can give somebody the right to make those life-sustaining treatment decisions over and above the doctors. So that's one of them. The second one is, and not many people know this, if you were hospitalised and the hospital decided that you needed to go into care to look after you, the hospital choose what care home you go into.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
That might not be the local one that's 20 minutes down the road. It might be one that's two hours away. It might be one that you know, isn't convenient. And once the doctors have made that decision, as a family, you don't have the right to override that decision without a lasting powers of attorney.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
Absolutely crazy. There is a really famous case, Betty Figg. Her mother was in a care home and she believed that her mother was being mistreated in the care home. She wanted to take her home and look after her in her own house. She went and took her mother from the care home and took her home. And the door was actually knocked down by the police.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
And they took her mother back to the care home that the daughter did not want her to be in. So it's crazy that as family, you think, but they're my mum. I know what's best for her. They're my dad. They're my sister. They're my whatever the relationship be. Without the last and prize of attorney, you don't have the right to make those decisions.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
Yeah, the health one is a lot of people do count that secondary to the finance one. But one thing to say about the finance one, I think picking up on your point, a lot of people think when you're married that you would naturally, if something happened to your partner, you would naturally be able to access your joint bank accounts. It's just not the case.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
If the bank is made aware that your husband or your wife is in a situation that they can't make the decisions, the joint account will be frozen because they're protecting the assets of the person that is not able to make those decisions. So it's really important to know as a married couple that marriage is not enough. What more do you want from me?
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
No, absolutely not. It kind of falls into that horrible area of things like insurance and boring things that you don't really like to spend money on. But it's the protection that it can give you, which is kind of similar to insurance, really, which It just gives you peace of mind, takes away stress. So, yeah, I get it's boring.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
Yes. So if we start with last-minute powers of attorney, you can have these for yourself individually, but you can also have them for your business. So if you...
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
You had an illness which meant your ability to make decisions was being affected. You might not want the same person making decisions about your business as who would make decisions about your personal finances. So for the property and financial, you can have a separate one for your business. That's really important if you are in a business that is regulated.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
So say, for example, you're an accountant. You can only elect another returnee in your lasting powers of attorney that is of the same standard. So you couldn't say as an accountant, I want my wife to be my attorney of my business because they wouldn't understand regulatory obligations.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
So you would have to have somebody else in that industry that is of the same quality of qualification as yourself.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
Lasting powers of attorney for businesses, especially for partnerships. You know, if you're in partnership with somebody, you can't... If somebody got...
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
degenerative disease you can't say oh they've got Alzheimer's so I no longer want them to be a director of the business because that's that's impacting on their human rights so if as partnerships you had a lasting powers of attorney you would be able to say actually they're not of sound mind I can make the decision or another person can make the decision instead of them so it's really important that if you're in partnerships definitely that you have these documents in place because otherwise
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
If somebody is in a coma and you need two directors to sign expenditure on your bank account, all of a sudden your business expenditures are stopping. So without that document, that's really, really important. From a will perspective, if you have a limited company, and it's trading. So if it's a limited company with investments, things like investment into property, then it wouldn't qualify.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
But if it's a trading limited company, then you get business property relief in your will. So if you pass your business, limited company, then you get 100% inheritance tax relief or a different percentage. Speak to your accountant because sometimes there's different brackets for different service types. But
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
you get 100% business property relief for inheritance tax because it's a limited company that was trading and that passes to your beneficiaries. But what's also important with limited companies is if you've only got one director and they die, that's the business. So the death of the person that is the limited company director... is the day the business stops, so it wouldn't be able to continue.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
So it's important to think about that. You can address that in your will and put protection in place.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
Very vague area. For businesses you also need to refer to. So when you set up a business, you have something called articles of association or memorandums of association. So in there, depending how they've been written, there might be allowances for what happens if the director dies. Those documents will always overwrite a will.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
It is absolutely that. And I know we all like to think that the horrible scenarios are never going to happen to us. But unfortunately, you just never know what life is going to throw at you.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
So if there is something in those documents and your accountant will hold them, or check them on Companies House, that whatever is stated in those documents will be what legally happens over your will. And last, powers of attorney, again, if you're in a regulated industry, then no, the attorney can't just step in.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
But again, there might be something in the Articles of Association that says in the instance of
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
Definitely. And, you know, you start a business with a business partner that you have a great relationship with and you bounce off each other well and you make great decisions together. you might not have the same chemistry or the same relationship with their husband or wife. You know, there can be some major clashes of personality, which again, could really impact the business and how it forms.
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
So if you're prepared and if you've done everything to put everything in place for your children, for your loved ones, make sure that everything runs as smooth as possible, then it can take away so much stress at a really,
You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
Yeah, they don't know what they're doing.