You Can! Inspiring Women In Business
Protect Your Legacy: Why Every Business Owner Needs a Will and Power of Attorney
Fri, 04 Apr 2025
In this episode of The You Can Podcast, Sarah Jolley-Jarvis sits down with Clare Sutherland, an expert in wills, trusts, and lasting powers of attorney, to uncover why every business owner and individual needs to have these essential legal documents in place. Clare explains the critical differences between wills and powers of attorney, how they protect your assets and loved ones, and why they’re not just for the elderly. Discover why business owners need a separate power of attorney for their business, how to safeguard your children’s inheritance, and the potential risks of not having these protections in place. Whether you're a sole trader, a limited company owner, or simply looking to secure your family’s future, this episode is packed with actionable advice to help you protect your legacy. Don't miss this essential conversation on safeguarding your business and personal assets!For more information on Clare and her services click here.For expert support in your business find out more here.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/you-can-inspiring-women-in-business/exclusive-contentAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Chapter 1: Why Do Business Owners Need Wills and Powers of Attorney?
Hello, and welcome to the You Can Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Jolly Jarvis, and today I am joined by the very lovely Claire Sutherland, and we're gonna be talking all around powers of attorney and wills and things like that. And so I'm gonna let Claire introduce herself to you, and then we will get cracking from there. So fire away, Claire.
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.
Okay, that easy sounds good. Because this is not a fun topic, is it really? Like this is not anything that anyone ever jumps out of bed and is excited for?
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.
And sometimes you're kind of doing it, which is good, isn't it? I mean, it's good that you like it. I think sometimes it's more around for the people that you care around than it is for you, really, isn't it? Because obviously a lot of these things are looking at if you are no longer around or able to do what you're currently doing. So it is more around protecting those that you love, isn't it?
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.
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,
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
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.
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Chapter 2: What Are the Differences Between Wills and Powers 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
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.
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.
Which is mad, isn't it? I find that really weird.
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.
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.
Madness. Okay. That makes sense.
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.
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?
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