Senior Consultant Solicitor – Private Wealth
Sangeeta advises individuals and families on wealth, wills and succession planning, as well as disputes regarding trust and estate matters.
Her expertise includes the use of estate planning vehicles such as trusts, foundations and companies to protect wealth from unexpected events like incapacity, claims from adverse third parties and to manage international tax concerns. She also provides succession planning advice to families with businesses, land and property that they wish to pass through the family line.
Sangeeta has considerable experience in all types of estate dispute, including challenges to wills, challenging or removing executors, and claims for financial provision under the Inheritance Act. She can guide you through all stages of proceedings relating to trusts, from applications to vary the terms of a trust or give trustees directions to claims for breach of trust or for the removal of trustees.
Her expertise in private capital matters, combined with a background in property litigation, means she is well placed to advise on wealth planning and disputes with a focus on estates that have property portfolios.
In all matters she is methodical and works with clients to present holistic solutions to their wealth planning needs.
Examples of her work include:
- Bringing an offshore trust onshore, which required refinancing properties, moving bank accounts and assets held within a BVI company
- Drafting complex wills and advising on succession for a family owned property investment company valued at £20m
- Estate administration for the wife of a former African President
- Estate administration where assets included land in India which was subject to litigation and obtaining permission to continue the litigation on behalf of the estate
- Challenging and seeking the removal of an administrator (also a beneficiary) who breached their fiduciary duty and sought to charge unreasonable expenses to increase their ‘share’ of the estate
- Successfully defending a claim for occupation rent under TOLATA and proving that the property in question fell under a trust.
Sangeeta is an active member of STEP – The Society for Trust and Estate Professionals – and has served on its Membership Committee for the last two years. She is also a Member of the STEP Panel of Experts for the STEP Private Client Awards 2020/21.
Her other interests include acting as pro-bono legal counsel for an independent, charity-led, school project in North West London, advising on their full remit of legal issues. She is also a School Governor.
