Drafting Wills for Farming Clients in Scotland - The Key Issues Considered

Introduction

This short introductory level webinar will explore the considerations which need to be made when drafting wills for farming clients.

It will look at the key areas that should be considered by practitioners when taking will instructions from clients.

The webinar will also reflect upon the changes that have been noted in the most recent Budget, and how these will impact succession planning for farming clients.

What You Will Learn

This short webinar will cover the following:

• The broad succession of the farm:
• Who is to inherit and how this will happen - is it a joint succession of the farm between siblings or an individual only? If there are multiple siblings and only one child is to inherit, how can the estate be dealt with to ensure fairness with the non-farming children?
• The interaction of legal rights with the farming partnership. The importance of how partnership property is held for legal rights, with some heritable property potentially being included in the overall 'pot' for division
• Inheritance tax:
• The key principles of agricultural property relief and business property relief and how the two complement each other in the case of a farm
• Consideration of IHT reliefs available to the individual and reliefs available to the farming business and the land
• Diversification of farmland, considering natural capital, woodland and holiday let businesses
• Review of the Balfour test on diversification
• Brief consideration of the changes discussed in the Budget
• Farming partnerships and their interaction with the will - the importance of reviewing any farming partnership alongside any will that is being drafted to ensure consistency and that one does not inadvertently 'trump' the other
• Succession of farming tenancies - consideration must be given to any tenancies that are in place and how these transfer on death

This pre-recorded webinar will be available to view from Tuesday 20th May 2025

Alternatively, you can gain access to this webinar and 1,700+ others via the MBL Webinar Subscription. Please email webinarsubscription@mblseminars.com for more details.