Terms of business

1. About us

Assisted Estate Planning Ltd is registered in England and Wales under company number 15594665. Our registered office is 71–75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9JQ. Our email address is info@assistedep.co.uk.

“We”, “us” and “our” in these terms mean Assisted Estate Planning Ltd. “You” means the person who asks us to provide services.

2. Our role and scope

We provide personal estate-planning guidance: understanding your circumstances and objectives, explaining options, making recommendations and coordinating agreed implementation. Alex Rawlinson is your principal point of contact.

Where specialist technical, legal or document-preparation work is required, we work with Solidus and an appropriate supporting legal or professional team. We will explain who is providing each part of the service and any separate terms that apply.

We do not provide regulated financial or investment advice, manage investments, arrange financial products or provide accounting advice. Where those services are needed, you should use a suitably authorised or qualified adviser. We do not act as a solicitor unless your specific written agreement expressly identifies a solicitor or regulated legal practice as doing so.

3. Before work begins

An initial conversation does not commit you to proceed. Before chargeable work starts, we will confirm in writing the work proposed, the provider responsible, fees and VAT, expected timescales, payment arrangements and any important assumptions or exclusions. You will have an opportunity to ask questions and decide in your own time.

Unless expressly agreed otherwise, information on this website is general information, not advice for your individual circumstances.

4. Our responsibilities

We will:

• provide our services with reasonable care and skill;
• listen to your objectives and explain recommendations, alternatives and material limitations in plain English;
• keep you reasonably informed and tell you if an expected timescale changes;
• identify and manage conflicts of interest fairly;
• protect confidential and personal information, subject to lawful disclosure; and
• make clear where another appropriately qualified professional should advise.

5. Your responsibilities

Our advice depends on the information available. You agree to:

• provide complete, accurate and up-to-date information and relevant documents;
• tell us promptly about changes or errors;
• read recommendations and draft documents carefully, check names, facts and wishes, and ask about anything unclear;
• make your own decisions freely and without pressure;
• follow signing, witnessing, registration or other implementation instructions; and
• pay agreed fees when due.

We are not responsible for an outcome caused by material information being withheld, inaccurate or not updated, or by instructions not being followed, to the extent it is fair and lawful to say so.

6. Fees, payment and additional work

We normally agree a fixed fee before a stage begins and confirm whether VAT is included. No additional paid work will be undertaken without your agreement. Invoices and payment dates will be set out in the quotation or client agreement. Late payment may delay work.

7. Cancellation and ending the engagement

Where you enter a distance or off-premises consumer contract, you will normally have a legal right to cancel during a 14-day period. We will provide the required cancellation information with the relevant client agreement.

If you expressly ask us to begin work during that period and then cancel, you may have to pay a proportionate amount for work properly completed up to cancellation. If the service is fully performed during the cancellation period at your express request and with the required acknowledgement, the cancellation right may end. Your specific notice will explain how to cancel.

After any statutory cancellation period, either of us may end the engagement by giving reasonable written notice. You remain responsible for agreed fees and third-party costs properly incurred up to the ending date. We may stop acting where there is a conflict, loss of confidence, failure to provide instructions or information, non-payment, abusive conduct, illegality or another good professional reason. We will explain this and, where reasonably possible, help avoid prejudice to you.

8. Timescales and changes

Any delivery date is an estimate unless expressly agreed as fixed. Timing can depend on you, third-party providers and the complexity of the work. We will tell you about material delays and provide an updated estimate.

Estate planning may be affected by changes in your family, assets, residence, health or the law. Unless you agree an ongoing review service, we do not promise to monitor your circumstances or notify you of every future change. We recommend reviewing your arrangements periodically and after a significant life event.

9. Other advisers and providers

With your permission, we may communicate with an introducer or other advisers so the work is appropriately joined up. Each independent firm remains responsible for its own advice and services. Their engagement terms, privacy notice and complaints process may apply to their work.

We will use reasonable care when selecting or recommending a provider. We do not exclude responsibility for our own work, but we are not responsible for an independent provider’s acts or omissions where it would be unfair or unlawful to make us responsible for them.

10. Communications, records and privacy

We normally communicate in English by telephone, video meeting, email, post and in person. Email carries inherent security and delivery risks; please tell us if you require a different method. We may ask you to confirm important instructions in writing.

We may record or transcribe a meeting only after telling you. Personal information is handled as explained in our privacy notice.

11. Liability

Nothing in these terms excludes or limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, breach of your statutory rights, or anything else that cannot lawfully be excluded.

Subject to that, we are responsible for loss that is a reasonably foreseeable result of our breach and is caused by us. We are not responsible for indirect or unforeseeable loss, or loss caused by matters outside our reasonable control. Any engagement-specific liability provisions will be set out fairly and prominently before you agree to them.

12. Complaints

Please tell us promptly if you are dissatisfied so we can try to put matters right. Our complaints process explains how to complain, our response times and how we identify the appropriate external route where another provider or professional body is involved.

13. General legal terms

If one part of these terms is found unenforceable, the remaining parts continue to apply. A delay in enforcing a right does not waive it. Nobody other than you and us has a right to enforce these general terms, although a separate client agreement may provide otherwise.

These terms and our relationship are governed by the law of England and Wales. If you are a consumer living elsewhere in the UK, you retain any mandatory protections and may be entitled to bring proceedings in your home courts.