About
Alice’s clients are wealthy families and the trustees, family offices and advisers who support them. Many of Alice’s clients are in the Arts and creative industries. Clients come to her for sound advice on cross-border succession planning, combined with UK tax advice, and Alice encourages her clients to see that the family wealth is much more than just the numbers on the balance sheet. International clients often have assets and family members across multiple jurisdictions, so the advice must balance multi-jurisdiction taxation issues with family dynamics.
Alice has a particular focus on clients in the arts, media and digital industries. Her clients include performers, writers, games creators, art collectors, app developers and music industry leaders. Before qualifying as a lawyer, Alice studied theatre. Early in her career she also worked at an international auction house, advising on arts and heritage taxation. Alice is very tuned into the estate planning needs of creative clients. She also advises trustees and families with art collections.
Many of Alice’s clients have US connections, including Brits moving to the US; and US families with UK connections.
Alice also advises on issues of mental capacity. This is an issue of increasing importance professionally, and as Alice’s mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2013, it is something she also understands first-hand. Alice helps families, money managers and trustees when a family member has mental capacity issues.
Alice is admitted to practise in England and Wales and as a foreign lawyer to the EU list of the supervisory commission of lawyers for the canton of Zurich and the Swiss Federation.
Questions Alice is often asked by her clients:
Wills and estate planning
- How to I protect my creative legacy as well as my financial assets?
- We have a blended family. How can I balance the needs of my new spouse and my children?
- Does Swiss forced heirship mean I can’t leave everything to my spouse?
- A family member has died and had assets in both Switzerland and the UK. Where does the estate pay taxes?
- I am moving to the UK, what pre-arrival tax planning should I think about?
Trusts and Foundations
- Is there any tax for the trustee/foundation board if we distribute to a UK resident?
- How can the trust/foundation help a beneficiary to buy a home in the UK?
- The trustee/foundation has Art in the UK, what do we need to know?
Questions Alice typically asks her clients:
- Has your family discussed the purpose of wealth?
- What’s most important to you about this issue?
- Can I summarise what I think you want to achieve (and please let me know if I haven’t got this right)
After almost ten years with Charles Russell Speechlys in London, Alice and her family moved to Zurich in 2016. In 2019, Alice created ‘Swiss City Parents’, a network for professionals in Switzerland who want a symbiotic relationship between their careers and parenting.
Experience
- Explaining why ‘domicile’ matters for UK citizens moving abroad
- Family Governance advice for creatives
- Wills for clients with assets in the UK and the US (and other jurisdictions)
- Advising trustees of the UK tax issues of distributions to UK residents
- Analysing the UK tax treatment of foreign entities, such as Foundations
- Advising on the transfer of valuable Art on the change of trusteeship
- Preparing a UK tax disclosures to regularise the reporting for UK resident non-domiciled clients and complex trusts
- Pre-UK arrival tax planning for valuable Art collections
- Legacy planning for Creatives
