2017 – A Year in Legacies

2017 has been an extremely busy year for us, and for the world of legacies in general!

Back in February, we had the launch of our Good Practice Guidance, which you can view here. This has been by far the most popular page on our website this year, with almost 5,000 views, so we hope this means that you are all finding the guidance a really useful tool. And you will be pleased to hear we will be adding more guidance notes in the new year.

In March came the judgement in the long-running case of Ilott v Mitson. As soon as the verdict was delivered, we updated our members and released a statement which received coverage in the press. You can see more here.

Our annual conference in May was the biggest and best ever, with 250 people joining us for a day packed full of legacy news, views and conversation. You can remind yourself of some of the highlights here.

Throughout the year we have been keeping our eye on potential changes to probate fees, which we were concerned could have a damaging affect on legacies. We wrote to the Ministry of Justice, alongside many of our partners, in July to raise these concerns with them. Several publications including the Times and Daily Mail picked up on our concerns. Read more here.

October saw us busily working with charities to collate their thoughts and concerns in relation to the Law Commission’s consultation on Wills. We submitted our response in November, which you can read – alongside press coverage – on our website.

And of course much more has been going on behind the scenes. We’ve grown our membership numbers yet again in 2017, and we’ve been very busy working on a new brand and website which will be launched in the new year. And of course there’s our brand new professional training programme which offers a whole range of opportunities for our members to develop their skills. Make sure you check out the full line-up for 2018 on our website here.

We thank all our members for their continued support and we look forward to another busy year in 2018!