Does an English will cover the flat in Kraków? Hammersmith's Polish community, settled around the cultural centre on King Street since the war and renewed since 2004, asks that question often, and Shepherd's Bush's Irish, Somali, Lebanese and Caribbean families ask its equivalents. It may, but a second will in the other country, drafted so that neither revokes the other, is usually safer, and a will solicitor in Hammersmith and Fulham should ask at the first meeting about every asset abroad. The April 2025 change from domicile to a residence-based inheritance tax test matters for the same families.
The borough's other inheritance problem is entirely domestic. A terrace in Fulham or a house in Brook Green bought in the 1980s now carries an estate well past the inheritance tax threshold, and the planning that follows, lifetime gifts, the residence allowance for a home left to children, trusts and charitable legacies, is the bread and butter of solicitors here. Mansion-flat leases in Barons Court shorten every year and may need extending before or after a death. Council tenancies on the White City and Clem Attlee estates cannot be left by will at all and pass, if they pass, under the Housing Act's succession rules, usually once.
Lasting powers of attorney for finance and health are the other document every solicitor recommends, sparing a family the Court of Protection if dementia arrives, and the intestacy rules, which give an unmarried partner nothing, are the reason to make the will at all.
Probate afterwards means valuing the estate, settling tax, obtaining the grant and distributing it, at home and abroad. Wills and powers of attorney are generally fixed-fee; probate may be fixed, hourly or a percentage.
Will and probate firms serving Hammersmith and Fulham are listed below, verified first. See wills, trusts and probate explained, the guides to the cost of a will and the cost of probate, what a lasting power of attorney is and the general will solicitors page.
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