Partners
Alison Voyce
Wills, Probate & Tax Saving Strategy Partner
Phone:
01582 765111
Expertise:
Alison is a Partner in the Private Client department at Taylor Walton and works with a growing team which offers a high quality service in the local area, as well as further afield. She offers specialist advice on a wide range of issues including Wills, lifetime tax-planning and probate, to an extensive client base, including owners of businesses, farms and landed estates.
Alison is a graduate of St Edmund Hall, Oxford and worked, until joining Taylor Walton, for Frere Cholmeley (where she was articled, qualifying in 1991) and its successor firms. Having worked for a London firm renowned for the quality of its private client practice, Alison was keen to work in the local area with a firm committed to offering a specialist service to private clients and joined Taylor Walton in late 2000. She became a partner in July 2003 and now heads up the Private Client team in the firm's Harpenden office, having previously been based in the Luton office. She is heavily involved in developing the firm's private client base and client gains in recent times have included the current incumbent of a local landed estate and his family keen to instruct more local legal advisors (as opposed to the established private client firm retained by previous generations) and a family with very substantial wealth derived largely from property interests keen to address tax-planning issues across several generations. Preserving and enhancing family wealth is one of Alison's key interests and she prides herself on her pragmatic approach to client problems.
Alison also works closely with the firm's Commercial Litigation department, having developed an expertise in contentious trust and probate claims, dealing with claims to challenge the validity of Wills and Codicils (including issues of undue influence and lack of testamentary capacity) and also advising on disputes between Executors and Trustees and beneficiaries (including applying to the Court for the approval of certain actions where necessary). More recently, she has been dealing with a challenge by a disenchanted family member (with whom there is a history of litigation) to the registration of an EPA where she is one of the appointed Attorneys.
A particularly interesting recent Will dispute involved representing the widow of a retired city banker with substantial assets in the UK and overseas in a substantial claim involving a dispute over her late husband's last Will which attracted significant attention in the national media and which was settled part-way through the trial on confidential terms with the validity challenge withdrawn by the deceased's sons and probate granted to our client.
Other Will disputes have involved advising the beneficiary of a death-bed Will made by a terminally ill client following a challenge (ultimately unsuccessful) to the validity of that Will.
Interesting probate cases include dealing with the administration of the multi-million pound estate of a deceased Lloyd's name who left his residuary estate to charity (to include obtaining a court order authorising the distribution of the estate by the professional executor) and dealing with a War Veterans' inheritance tax exemption claim on the estate of a client who had been a prisoner of war in Burma.
Alison also advises on complex and valuable trusts and acts as a trustee in a number of cases. She has recently advised one branch of a family as beneficiaries of a long established family discretionary trust regarding the sale of a substantial and well known timber business (wholly owned by the trust) to a management team involving another branch of the family. Once again, this involved working with the Commercial Litigation department following court proceedings brought by the trustees to verify their discretionary decisions in view of family disharmony.
Following recent changes to the taxation of trusts, Alison has spent quite a lot of time advising clients on current family trust structures and implementing changes to those arrangements to take advantage of the "window of opportunity" offered by the new legislation. She also advises extensively on trust structures within Wills, most commonly where there are family problems of one kind or another.
Alison is recommended by The Legal 500 for being "a strong communicator and good at establishing relationships with the other side".
She prides herself on developing good working relationships with both professional referrers and clients.
Leisure:
Alison's interests outside the office include spending time with her family, skiing and tennis. She also enjoys travelling (both at home and overseas) and eating out.