Samuel Johnson's birthplace stands on Lichfield's market square, and the city has been comfortable with old money for a long time. With detached houses in Boley Park, Georgian townhouses in the centre and farmhouses in the villages, a good many Lichfield estates attract inheritance tax, and will solicitors here do more tax planning than most of their Staffordshire colleagues. Lifetime gifts, trusts for grandchildren and a second spouse's position all need thought in good time.
Farms are a special case. Families along the HS2 route have received compensation for land taken, and money that used to be a field is taxed very differently from the field itself; agricultural and business property relief are being reshaped too, so succession plans written a decade ago may no longer work, and solicitors acting for farming families at Alrewas, Whittington and Kings Bromley are revisiting them.
Then there is the question of who decides when a person no longer can. A Lichfield solicitor will usually suggest two lasting powers of attorney alongside the will, one for finances and one for health, because a family without them must go to the Court of Protection before it can touch a bank account or settle a care placement. The same meeting often covers care fees and, for couples who never married, the fact that intestacy gives a surviving partner nothing.
After a death the firm can act for the executors, valuing assets, reporting to HMRC, obtaining the grant and distributing an estate that is seldom small once a Lichfield house is in it. Wills and lasting powers of attorney are usually fixed-fee; probate is quoted as a fixed sum, by the hour or as a percentage, so ask which.
The firms below handle wills, trusts and estates in and around Lichfield, verified ones at the top. Start with wills, trusts and probate explained, then how much a will costs, what probate costs and what a lasting power of attorney is; the general will solicitors page describes the first appointment.
