The Age Discrimination regulations, which came into force this month, will have a major impact on business warned Crane & Staples Head of Employment Richard Bluestone.

Richard said, “The regulations will cause “a real headache” for employers as they struggle to come to terms with managing their recruitment and development programmes . Meanwhile, job advertisements using phrases such as “join a young dynamic team”, “mature person/young graduate required” or “at least five years experience” could be deemed discriminatory."

Richard  added: “Even salary structures will need to be carefully examined to ensure they are not biased towards older people and that they reflect the contribution of the individual and the standards of their job performance. The regulations make it illegal for employers to discriminate against employees, trainees or job seekers because of their age and ensure that all workers regardless of age have the same rights in terms of training and promotion"

He continued that the regulations are divided into four categories: direct discrimination, indirect discrimination, harassment and victimisation.  And he will be running a seminar in the New Year to discuss these.

Retirement ages under 65 will be banned by the regulations except where they can be objectively justified, and they will remove the current upper qualifying age for unfair dismissal and redundancy rights – except that retirement is now a potentially valid reason for termination if the correct procedure is followed.

No-one likes to think about their own death, but as David Bird, Partner at Crane & Staples solicitors in Welwyn Garden City explains, if you do not make plans while you are still alive you can leave a whole host of problems behind for your grieving family to sort out.

It took 15 years of legal wrangling before the fortune of billionaire Howard Hughes was distributed amongst his surviving relatives, all because he had not bothered to make a will.

David said: “Maybe he, like many other people, felt daunted by the process of making a will. In reality, it can be quite straightforward and need not cost the earth.”

David has put together his top ten tips for creating the perfect will:-

• Make sure whoever draws up your will knows what they are doing. Choose wisely who you ask to draw up your will. DIY works for home improvements but, even if you are extremely confident and knowledgeable, it does not work for wills. Lawyers make more money from sorting out badly drafted wills and dealing with claims in respect of those wills than they do from drawing them up!

• Choose your executors carefully. Executors are responsible for handling your estate in accordance with your instructions. It is a responsible and demanding role and can involve making commercial decisions and dealing with large sums of money.

• Appoint a substitute executor. If you are married you will probably have your spouse as executor. If you both died in a car crash, neither of you would have an executor so always have a fall-back position, particularly where young children are involved.

• Appoint guardians. If you are the last living parent and die leaving children under 18, a guardian may be appointed by the court if you have not specified in your will who you want this person or persons to be.

• Appoint dependable trustees. If you are setting up a trust in your will or if the beneficiaries may be aged under 18 when you die, you will need to appoint trustees. They will be responsible for managing and investing money or looking after property until the beneficiaries inherit.

• Provide for specific legacies. To preserve family heirlooms or items of special sentimental value you should leave these items as a specific legacy to a named beneficiary.

• Make sure you leave a residuary gift. The residue is what is left over in the estate after legacies are settled. You must specify who residue goes to, as if you fail to do so you will create a partial intestacy – the general law will then dictate who gets the residue, which will be family members in a strict blood line order or if you have no blood relatives, the state.

• Make a tax efficient will. Inheritance tax is becoming a burden for many families as the value of property rises. If you are married you can include a discretionary trust in the will, which might save your children or other beneficiaries a huge amount of money.

• Sign your will and make sure it is properly witnessed – and then safely stored. A will must be signed in front of two independent witnesses – otherwise it will not be valid. A witness should not be anyone mentioned in the will or married to anyone benefiting under the will. Once a will is correctly signed and witnessed, store it in a safe place where it can be protected from fire, flood or theft. Do not hide your will – it is no good to anyone if it cannot be found!

• Review your will regularly. An out-of-date will can be as bad as no will at all. In most families in any 3 – 5 year time frame there is likely to be a birth, death or a marriage (and maybe even a divorce). All of those events can affect the will and who you might want to benefit.

David concluded: “The morbid fact is that 2,000 people die every day in the UK and 60 per cent do not bother to make a will at all. But if anything should shock people into action it is the stark fact that if there is no will the general intestacy laws will effectively decide who gets what. There are fixed rules which dictate where money and possessions go risking family and friends being left inadequately provided for with very possibly unexpected tax bills reducing the amount available for distribution. Making a will can save a lot of people a great deal of heartache at what is inevitably a very difficult time.”

Soaring rents and property prices are causing many parents to consider helping their children on to the property ladder, sometimes by buying a property earmarked long term for the children or, more often, by buying a house as the children head off to university.

David Bird, Partner at Welwyn Garden City law firm Crane & Staples is urging people to be aware of the financial and tax implications of this forward planning.

David said: “The idea is simple, buy the property now, let it out for a number of years or let the child at university share the property with their friends and then pass it on or sell when the child needs a place of their own.

“However, buying a house now to pass on to a child means negotiating a tax minefield, with income tax on the rent, capital gains tax and inheritance tax to consider. Such arrangements should not be entered into without taking expert advice.”

With top-up fees now impacting on families and accommodation in university towns becoming increasingly expensive, more and more parents are taking the opportunity to invest in property while their child is studying.

David said: “Once upon a time, parents would help their children to pay the rent, but rent is seen more and more as dead money".

“So many are buying a house instead, which it is hoped will rise in value while they're at university.

“It's an investment. They're helping their children as they would have helped them anyway, but they're using the money for a deposit rather than rent. After their child graduates, they can sell the house for a profit, or keep it and rent it out.”

David says that buying a three or four bedroom property to house your son or daughter and rent out to other students is not as unaffordable as it sounds especially, in these grant-free days, when you could be saddled with three years' rent bills anyway.

A study  found there are currently 83,000 properties that have been specifically bought for students by their parents, a rise of 32 per cent from 2000. The number is expected to hit the 100,000 mark by 2010 with parents choosing to buy rather than 'wasting' money on rent.

And the tax benefits of buying property for a child can be substantial, according to David.

“If you do it the simplest way, by buying a house in your name where your children and their friends live, there are no particular tax benefits and the downside of the potential for capital gains tax on gains/increases in value between purchase and sale,” he says.

“If, instead you buy in your child’s name there are benefits. But do you really want your 18 – 21 year old owning property where you have provided the wherewithal to buy the house and may also be acting as guarantor for some mortgage borrowing or have increased the mortgage on your own house to generate the cash? I think not!”

David suggests that the most flexible, secure and tax-effective way of arranging the purchase might be to do so through a trust, which secures tax advantages but retains control with the parents.