Article
Claire Charman (TEP) from SJP Law becomes a full member of STEP
Posted
Claire is the Head of the firm’s Commercial Division and is a Solicitor specialising in helping businesses, landowners and developers to acquire, manage, protect and dispose of their land and business assets. She began her employment at SJP Law in 1999 as a Trainee Solicitor and qualified in 2001. She became a Partner of the firm in 2006.
Her vast amount of legal and business knowledge and the advice that she delivers, comes from practical hands on experience of working as a trusted adviser to local owner-managed businesses and the families that run them. The long term partnerships developed with clients helps Claire to identify practical solutions and negotiate appropriate terms to achieve business and personal objectives.
Claire has been appointed as a trustee for a number of clients to help protect children and vulnerable adults in the management of family wealth.
Qualifications
- LLB
Memberships
- The Law Society
- Country Landowners Association
- TEP (full member of STEP)
- Eurojuris
- Fellow of the Agricultural Law Association
Claire Charman TEP, Director of SJP Law, has become a full member of STEP, a global professional body of more than 20,000 members comprising lawyers, accountants, financial advisors and other practitioners specialising in helping families plan for their future.
As a full member, known as TEP (Trust and Estates Practitioner), Claire is recognised as an expert in her field, with proven qualifications and experience.
Claire’s experience and advice covers:
- Charity formation/administration
- Company formation/management
- Contentious trusts and estates
- Dispute resolution
- Elderly and vulnerable clients
- Estate planning/administration
- Family business
- Rural family, business and agriculture
- Tax
- Trust planning/administration
- Wills and probate
- Tax advisory - Trusts and estate planning
- Wills and administration of deceased estates
- Succession planning
- Escrow services
- Valuation
Areas of interest
Claire has experience in working with farmers across a range of agricultural issues and diversification, particularly into renewable energy projects as well as wills and succession planning.
Claire also works with local builders helping with residential development projects and spends time negotiating conditional contracts with landowners and planning agreements with local authorities on behalf of family businesses. Claire has also helped families to maximise the value of their land assets on disposals to national housebuilders for residential development.
Claire acts as a professional executor, trustee and attorney to carry out the wishes of clients, that in many cases Claire has worked with at the firm, for the past 20 years. Working closely with clients to understand their business structures, family dynamics and long term ambitions has helped Claire to make informed and timely decisions in her professional capacity.
Work cases
- Worked with a client and their planning consultants to negotiate and complete a section 106 planning agreement to a tight deadline to help secure planning consent for a significant new project in the leisure and tourism sector
- Successfully resolved a planning dispute with a local authority to avoid protracted and expensive litigation allowing the family business client to satisfactorily build out the development and sell on the constructed units
- Assisted a number of farming families over the recent past to review options and then implement their succession plans. This has involved considering proposals such as a sale of the farm in its entirety; maintaining a business structure involving numerous family members; or dividing up the farmland and farming operations for the next generation to have full and independent control of their destiny rather than siblings or cousins holding joint assets for the longer term.
- Claire spent over a decade getting to know a client and when that client lost mental capacity, Claire was able to step in and provide the professional support when it was needed most. This gave the extended family the comfort of knowing appropriate arrangements were in place that did not overburden their already hectic lives. By making use of lifetime trusts, Claire and her co-trustee were able to sell the house, on the death of the client, without the need for a grant of probate. This helped avoid the ongoing burden of property maintenance and upkeep and provided the cash injection to pay the inheritance tax liability within 6 months of the date of death to avoid any interest charges.
