Every week Benson Williams director Jim Stanistreet delivers a brief presentation to a group of local business professionals at a network meeting. This is a vitally important way of maintaining the firm’s profile in the local area, building and maintaining our credibility, and building our client bank via referrals from within the network. The presentations are designed to be topical and entertaining, as well as having important legal content. Here are a selection of topics covered recently:
Several famous personalities have celebrated the arrival of a child recently. William and Kate, Abbey Clancy and Peter Crouch, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Kiera Knightly to name a few. Using the fact that the audience can readily relate to these stories made it possible to highlight the importance of making a Will to protect young children, concentrating on the need to appoint guardians and the need to appoint Trustees to look after a child’s inheritance whilst they are underage.
Similarly, famous personalities will go through a divorce. Recently the footballer John Fashanu and football manager Brendan Rodgers have been in the papers for this reason. Again their stories highlighted the need to update one’s Will after a divorce or similar dramatic change of circumstance.
The subject of residential care is always a big talking point at the network meetings. In early 2015 the firm was represented at a two day training course organised by The Institute of Professional Willwriters which went into specific detail about the use of Will trusts and lifetime trusts, and how they can help to shelter assets from a number of things including care fees. Much of this information has been shared at the network presentations.
Updating the audience on our involvement with local charities is always a hot topic. Our most recent statistics in terms of money generated through “Will weeks” can be seen elsewhere in our news page, and aside from sharing these figures with the other firms represented at the network, we advise them of our forthcoming plans. Chiefly we have Will weeks with Compton Hospice, John Taylor Hospice, and Acorns Children’s Hospice booked for the autumn in 2015.
We will keep you informed of new topics covered in the presentations in due course.
