Meet Carly
I joined Lawrence Stephens as a Director in the Private Wealth and Succession Planning department in June 2022. I previously headed up the private client team at Brecher LLP, advising on contentious and non-contentious private wealth.
I have practiced in the high net wealth private client industry for over 20 years. My practice covers advice and assistance to UK and international clients. Clients include fiduciaries, corporate entities, entrepreneurs and individuals with family wealth.
I offer a fused practice of private client litigation and non-contentious work.
My litigation work is UK and cross-border actions, involving dependency claims under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975, contentious probate actions, will challenges, the removal of fiduciaries, breach of trust actions, HMRC challenges, mental capacity challenges, charity disputes and professional negligence.
On the non-contentious side, I prepare and administer wills and trusts, undertake UK and cross-border probate administration, succession planning, lifetime planning, lasting powers of attorney and deputyship matters and philanthropy. My main focuses are all aspects of direct taxes (inheritance tax, capital gains tax and income tax) and UK and international asset structuring for asset protection, succession and tax planning purposes using trust structures and family investment companies.
Away from work, I enjoy travel, challenging myself with new sports, music and watching sport.
Experience highlights
- Restructuring of share ownership for private clients prior to company floating and change in citizenship and residence status of client; the impetus of the exercise asset protection and future succession planning
- Acting for the beneficiary of a high value offshore trust to negotiate with the trustees a significant distribution as a result of a challenge by the beneficiary for trustees’ breach of fiduciary duties.
- Settlement of negotiations with HMRC in respect of the inheritance tax payable from an estate with multi-jurisdictional assets of an ultra-high value, involving the application of case law to support the discounting of asset values and the use of estate capital losses
- Winding up of a shares pension scheme where the sole member lacks capacity and the directors of the company in which the shares were held were in dispute
- Multi-jurisdictional high value contentious probate focusing on challenges over domicile and claims for dependency under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975, involving the application of private international laws. Successfully defending the claims to the estate
- Acting for trustees in the winding up of a historic employee benefit trust that had been negligently drafted by a third party and amended negligently over a period of 15 years. Advising and resolving the tax status of the trust with HMRC and thereafter winding it up
