Jane Robinson
Senior Associate (Trust and Estate Practitioner)
Contact details
Jane assists clients with obtaining grants of representation and administering estates.
Main areas of practice
Jane advises clients on all aspects of estate administration, including obtaining grants of representation and administering both straightforward and complex estates. She also provides advice to individuals and charities who are appointed as executors, or who are beneficiaries of a Will, in order to resolve their problem estates.
Jane is a full Member of the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners.
Clients
Jane acts for private clients as well as national/local charity clients.
Expertise & Services
You’ve been so brilliant at helping with this very sensitive situation. It’s meant a lot.
Career
After graduating from University, Jane worked for NatWest in their Trustee & Investment Team in Oxford, before moving on to work for several highly regarded law firms in and around Oxford as part of their respective private client services.
Contact details
Memberships
- Full Member of the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners (STEP)
- STEP’s 'Contentious Trust and Estates', 'Charities (UK)', and 'Cross-Border Estates' Special Interest Groups
Significant Experience
- Acting for the Executor of an estate which included significant farming assets
- Advising an Executor on a multi-million pound estate which included several businesses, with underlying family disputes which needed resolving
- Dealing with estates with charities as executors and/or beneficiaries, and advising them on the mitigation of capital gains tax and inheritance tax
Additional Expertise
In addition to advising private clients, Jane also acted for charity clients for over 15 years, advising them on the varied legal and tax issues arising in respect of bequests to charities, many involving complex issues such as landed estates, literary assets, overseas property or investments, or heritage and digital assets.
Jane also has experience in administering and winding up trusts (both during the lifetime and following the death of a life tenant) including those with charity beneficiaries; dealing with all aspects of property trusts; s116 Senior Courts Act Grant applications; preparing affidavits in support of the removal of Personal Representatives under s50 AEA 1925, and Inventory & Account applications.
She has also taken on partly administered estates after the removal of the executors (by consent or otherwise), as well as giving advice to charities who are beneficiaries of a will, in order to resolve what might otherwise be problem estates or trusts.
Examples of these include reviewing IHT calculations where the burden of tax has been misapplied; the interpretation of poorly drafted or handwritten Wills; drafting cy-pres/Royal Sign Manual Direction applications; considering and drafting ex-gratia applications on behalf of charities; drafting or troubleshooting complex estate or trust accounts; reviewing executors/ Solicitors costs; tracing assets (and beneficiaries) where there are limited estate papers; liaising with executors where legacies or share of residue have been unduly delayed; dealing with the correct taxation of an estate; and the mitigation of tax liabilities.
Jane also contributed to the Royal Academy of Arts publication ‘The Artist’s Legacy – Estate Planning in the Visual Arts’
In 2014, Jane was awarded the STEP ‘President’s Prize QP Student of the Year (E&W) (Accounting & Administration)’ for an essay discussing the subject of ‘estate accounts / who is entitled to see estate and trust papers’.
