Amy Lane

Expertise Amy Advises Experience Highlights Career History Testimonials

Partner

Private Client

+44 (0)7715 243659

Expertise

Amy is a Partner in the Private Client team at gunnercooke, helping individuals, families and business owners protect, preserve and pass on their wealth through expert estate planning advice across London and the South East.  She is able to meet with clients at our London offices, as well as in Kent and Sussex (or Microsoft Teams, if you would prefer).

With over ten years’ experience, Amy advises on all aspects of private client work, including Wills, inheritance tax and estate planning, Family Investment Companies, trusts, powers of attorney (including for business owners), probate and estate administration, and cross-border estates.

Amy provides strategic estate planning support to individuals and families, as well as next-generation professionals, sporting personalities, farmers and business owners. She works with multiple generations to help protect and maximise family wealth for the future.  This advice can often include establishing and administering trusts and helping her clients utilise them in a tax-efficient manner. She also advises trustees on their fiduciary duties and beneficiaries on their rights and entitlements. Her trust and estate planning work frequently involves advising farmers and landowners on succession planning, inheritance tax reliefs and strategies to maximise the value of landholdings, often working alongside agents and developers to secure long-term benefits for future generations.  She also advises executors and beneficiaries on estate administration matters, including obtaining probate, preparing inheritance tax returns and implementing post-death planning through Deeds of Variation to maximise available reliefs. She regularly assists beneficiaries in developing their own estate planning strategies following the receipt of an inheritance.

Amy is Chair of the Kent branch of the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners (STEP), the leading international professional body for trust and estate practitioners. She holds the full STEP Diploma in Tax and Estate Planning and is also a contracted marker for the STEP Diploma. This internationally recognised qualification provides her with a broad and in-depth knowledge base to support clients and their families across a wide range of complex private wealth matters enabling her to deliver practical, tailored advice to clients and their families.

Amy has been recognised by Legal 500 as being “personable, empathetic, professional and thoroughly effective”.

Amy Advises

  • Inheritance Tax planning during lifetime and post-death arrangements such as a Deed of Variation
  • Will structures, particularly for asset protection purposes and succession planning for families, farms and companies
  • Family Investment Companies
  • The use of trusts including creation, administration and termination
  • Declarations of Trust
  • Administering estates, including those with foreign elements and/or agricultural or business assets
  • Powers of attorney for property and finances as well as health and welfare, together with powers of attorney for business owners

Experience Highlights

  • Advising a farming family on the diversification of the farm with a view to increasing the availability of Agricultural Property Relief (now Agricultural Relief). Advice included looking at the farming operation, which parts would not qualify on death and restructuring with a view to reducing the headline value of their estate for IHT purposes.
  • Advising personal representatives about an estate where the deceased died without leaving a valid will. The estate included a horticultural partnership, of which the deceased’s son was a partner.  The partnership warehoused a number of properties as well as land.  The advice included preparing a deed of variation to make a successful claim for both Agricultural Relief and Business Property Relief (now Business Relief) for the business assets with the remainder of the assets being varied to give the deceased’s surviving wife a life interest to claim the spouse exemption.  This created a tax saving of approximately £500,000.
  • Advising trustees of a trust created by a Will where, before the client’s death, she had intended to give her US property to her US resident son but died before doing so.  She died without a Will in the US, so the UK executors and trustees were responsible for administering the US estate.  The advice included liaising with a US realtor to ensure the trustees’ responsibilities regarding the safety of the property were met.  Further advice included liaising with a US accountant about the trustees’ reporting obligations in the US and considering the options to ensure the son’s needs were met, whilst avoiding the risk of redirection of the house in the future or affecting his entitlement to state benefits in the US.

Career History

Previous Law firms

  • Amy joined Brachers LLP in Maidstone in September 2014 as a Trainee Solicitor. She remained with the firm on qualification in 2016 (having spent 15 months of her training contract in Private Client) until April 2019
  • Amy joined Thomson Snell & Passmore LLP in Tunbridge Wells in April 2019, before joining gunnercooke as a Partner in September 2025

 

Memberships

  • Amy is the Chair of STEP, Kent
  • Amy is a full member of STEP, holding the diploma in tax and estate planning
  • Amy is a Contracted Marker for STEP via CLTI
  • Amy is a Judge for the Probate Industry Awards (2026)
  • Amy is a Dementia Friend
  • Amy has previously sat as Councillor for both Kent Law Society and the Tunbridge Wells & Tonbridge District Law Society (TWTDLS). She was Secretary for the TWTDLS too

 

Education

  • University of Sussex
  • University of Law (London)

Other

Amy has historically been shortlisted as one of only six practitioners worldwide for Young Practitioner of the Year at the STEP awards.

Amy was published in STEP in 2025, discussing redefining family and assisted conception through donors, IVF and surrogacy (a topic she is passionate about raising awareness of):- https://journal.step.org/step-journal-issue-1-2025/donations-welcome

Expertise

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Amy is a Partner in the Private Client team at gunnercooke, helping individuals, families and business owners protect, preserve and pass on their wealth through expert estate planning advice across London and the South East.  She is able to meet with clients at our London offices, as well as in Kent and Sussex (or Microsoft Teams, if you would prefer).

With over ten years’ experience, Amy advises on all aspects of private client work, including Wills, inheritance tax and estate planning, Family Investment Companies, trusts, powers of attorney (including for business owners), probate and estate administration, and cross-border estates.

Amy provides strategic estate planning support to individuals and families, as well as next-generation professionals, sporting personalities, farmers and business owners. She works with multiple generations to help protect and maximise family wealth for the future.  This advice can often include establishing and administering trusts and helping her clients utilise them in a tax-efficient manner. She also advises trustees on their fiduciary duties and beneficiaries on their rights and entitlements. Her trust and estate planning work frequently involves advising farmers and landowners on succession planning, inheritance tax reliefs and strategies to maximise the value of landholdings, often working alongside agents and developers to secure long-term benefits for future generations.  She also advises executors and beneficiaries on estate administration matters, including obtaining probate, preparing inheritance tax returns and implementing post-death planning through Deeds of Variation to maximise available reliefs. She regularly assists beneficiaries in developing their own estate planning strategies following the receipt of an inheritance.

Amy is Chair of the Kent branch of the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners (STEP), the leading international professional body for trust and estate practitioners. She holds the full STEP Diploma in Tax and Estate Planning and is also a contracted marker for the STEP Diploma. This internationally recognised qualification provides her with a broad and in-depth knowledge base to support clients and their families across a wide range of complex private wealth matters enabling her to deliver practical, tailored advice to clients and their families.

Amy has been recognised by Legal 500 as being “personable, empathetic, professional and thoroughly effective”.

Amy Advises

Back to top
  • Inheritance Tax planning during lifetime and post-death arrangements such as a Deed of Variation
  • Will structures, particularly for asset protection purposes and succession planning for families, farms and companies
  • Family Investment Companies
  • The use of trusts including creation, administration and termination
  • Declarations of Trust
  • Administering estates, including those with foreign elements and/or agricultural or business assets
  • Powers of attorney for property and finances as well as health and welfare, together with powers of attorney for business owners

Experience Highlights

Back to top
  • Advising a farming family on the diversification of the farm with a view to increasing the availability of Agricultural Property Relief (now Agricultural Relief). Advice included looking at the farming operation, which parts would not qualify on death and restructuring with a view to reducing the headline value of their estate for IHT purposes.
  • Advising personal representatives about an estate where the deceased died without leaving a valid will. The estate included a horticultural partnership, of which the deceased’s son was a partner.  The partnership warehoused a number of properties as well as land.  The advice included preparing a deed of variation to make a successful claim for both Agricultural Relief and Business Property Relief (now Business Relief) for the business assets with the remainder of the assets being varied to give the deceased’s surviving wife a life interest to claim the spouse exemption.  This created a tax saving of approximately £500,000.
  • Advising trustees of a trust created by a Will where, before the client’s death, she had intended to give her US property to her US resident son but died before doing so.  She died without a Will in the US, so the UK executors and trustees were responsible for administering the US estate.  The advice included liaising with a US realtor to ensure the trustees’ responsibilities regarding the safety of the property were met.  Further advice included liaising with a US accountant about the trustees’ reporting obligations in the US and considering the options to ensure the son’s needs were met, whilst avoiding the risk of redirection of the house in the future or affecting his entitlement to state benefits in the US.

Career History

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Previous Law firms

  • Amy joined Brachers LLP in Maidstone in September 2014 as a Trainee Solicitor. She remained with the firm on qualification in 2016 (having spent 15 months of her training contract in Private Client) until April 2019
  • Amy joined Thomson Snell & Passmore LLP in Tunbridge Wells in April 2019, before joining gunnercooke as a Partner in September 2025

 

Memberships

  • Amy is the Chair of STEP, Kent
  • Amy is a full member of STEP, holding the diploma in tax and estate planning
  • Amy is a Contracted Marker for STEP via CLTI
  • Amy is a Judge for the Probate Industry Awards (2026)
  • Amy is a Dementia Friend
  • Amy has previously sat as Councillor for both Kent Law Society and the Tunbridge Wells & Tonbridge District Law Society (TWTDLS). She was Secretary for the TWTDLS too

 

Education

  • University of Sussex
  • University of Law (London)

Other

Amy has historically been shortlisted as one of only six practitioners worldwide for Young Practitioner of the Year at the STEP awards.

Amy was published in STEP in 2025, discussing redefining family and assisted conception through donors, IVF and surrogacy (a topic she is passionate about raising awareness of):- https://journal.step.org/step-journal-issue-1-2025/donations-welcome

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