Seahouses, Probus

Chairman Ian Wilkinson opened the Seahouses Probus Club meeting and after welcoming a new member informed us that the next annual lunch will be on the third Wednesday in October at Bamburgh Golf Club.

Roy Dodds thanked us for supporting the Rotary Christmas draw and gave Gordon Cowan his cash prize.

After the apologies came the birthday good wishes followed by the secretary’s and the treasurer’s reports.

The speaker was Peter Sowerby from Collective Legal Solutions, a firm specialising in Inheritance Tax planning.

His talk was not restricted to planning for the payment of Inheritance Tax, which he described as a ‘voluntary tax’, but covered planning for the future. The solutions he proposed referred to problems that arose from the possibility of the need for long term care, the need to protect assets, the need for a will that protects these assets from going to the wrong beneficiary, the possibility that powers of attorney might be required to avoid the costs and delays with the court of protection, and warnings regarding the dangers of transferring property to family members and that joint bank accounts can be frozen on the death of one of the signatories.

Questions and answers were many throughout an enthralling talk and thanks were given by Brian Brand for a talk that was on a serious matter but not without humour and raised many matters of real concern.