Welcome to the May/June issue of Elderly Client Adviser. This issue we look at the current state of play for long-term investors; risk management in wills, trusts and probate; the new IHT400 form; the Disability Discrimination Act 1995; changing a will after death; and, we profile another type of elderly client adviser.

   Spring is slowly (and hopefully this year) turning to Summer, and the chatter of ‘green shoots’ from across the Atlantic recently made its way to the UK (much like swine flu). Cynical as I am, I can’t help but wonder which will blossom first.

   Front-page news is currently fully occupied by how much money MPs have been ‘mistakenly’ claiming, for which they are profoundly sorry and unreservedly apologising, and yet they are (ever so logically) keeping their jobs. Does anyone else find that a little odd? It does make me wonder what else the government may not have been ‘noticing’ – such as the fact that while there maybe a glimmer of a tiny green shoots in the distance, they ain’t gonna grow into a tree for some years yet!

   Firms are still trying to keep their heads above water any which way they can, and redundancies are still rife in the daily news: at times given as an honest and frank response to the recession; at others under the guise of ‘restructuring’… clever.

   Potential trainees are finding the legal market even harder to enter, at least in the coming years. While for those with secured training contracts, ‘deferral’ is the word du jour, sometimes coming with a large spoon of (monetary) sweetener, sometimes with the attitude that they should just be grateful that they still have a training contract in 2010/11/12.

   Having been in the position of paralegaling while waiting for a training contract to start, feeling as though your career was rather being put on hold while you move documents from red folders into blue folders (not my finest paralegal position!) I can’t help but feel for those less compensated trainees out there. They have to throw themselves back into the job market and compete with every other graduate out there for what few jobs there are, with not so much as a bourbon biscuit to take the edge off.

   The private client sector seems, thankfully, to be faring better than most, and I hope that we at Elderly Client Adviser will continue to provide guidance through these difficult and somewhat unpredictable times.

   I would like to thank all those who have helped me with this issue of Elderly Client Adviser. If there are any issues you would like to see covered or if you wish to contribute please do get in touch. Any feedback would also be very gratefully received.

Joanna Lee

Editor