Duncan Jackson

The bare facts are I am a Private Client Lawyer with 20 years experience advising a wide range of private individuals and business owners on all aspects of “wealth preservation” through Inheritance Tax and Capital Gains Tax planning, Wills, Trusts, business restructure and Lasting Powers of Attorney.

When my children were much younger they asked me what I did for a living and I described it as “keeping rich people rich by stopping them paying too much tax” (cue  an age appropriate conversation about what constitutes “tax” for a 4 year old) but in my 20 years with Buckles this has evolved into “helping individuals protect assets from all threats, not just the tax man". Whilst this inevitably still involves a significant amount of Inheritance Tax and Capital Gains Tax planning for my clients as life and societies become more complicated it also increasingly involves :

• Although I do not practice I am a qualified Independent Financial Advisor. This enables me to look beyond the narrow legal focus of assisting clients but also put their affairs into a wider financial context.
• Using Wills, Trusts, Company and Partnership Structures to ensure that your beneficiaries, be they family members or otherwise, benefit from your assets, not their ex spouse or partner.
• Ensuring that if you are surviving by your spouse or partner and they enter into a new relationship or remarry your family, not any new spouse or partner, benefit from your assets.
• Protecting assets against the payment of care home fees.
• Claims involving Wills and other issues following death are one of the fastest growing arears of litigation so when it does go wrong I work with my litigation colleagues in dealing with and advising on claims against the estate under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act and all the issues surrounding the validity of Wills. This often involves restructuring the tax payable by an estate, and by increasing the net amount available this often makes settling the dispute easier.

I am fortunate to work with an exceptional team of 21 other lawyers in the Private Team Department at Buckles. The philosophy of the whole team is that we are “people first and lawyers second” since for many individuals engaging with the legal profession can be a difficult and stressful experience, often at a time in their lives that is already traumatic. Treating them in an empathetic manner, not just focusing on the black letter legal solution, often leads to better solutions on the basis that working out what is really important to my clients enables me to achieve the best bespoke solution for them. What lawyers think is a good result is not always what clients want. People and their history interest me and I have been fortunate enough to act for a paratrooper who fought at the Battle of Arnhem, a Jewish Concentration Camp survivor, a journalist who covered the Vietnam war and several prog rockers from the 1970s.

Although I do not practice I am a qualified Independent Financial Advisor. This enables me to look beyond the narrow legal focus when assisting clients and put their affairs into a wider financial context.

Although the Private Client Team at Buckles is large I work closely with Rose Welch, a Solicitor who assists me on all aspects of Inheritance and Capital Gains Tax planning, Alex Burch a qualified Solicitor specialising in all aspects of Will Disputes and Nichola Stephens a Paralegal. If you can’t get hold of me one of them will always be available to help.